- MILAN: The Italian stock market erased early losses and turned positive on Monday on market talk that Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi could resign soon, traders said.
Two respected journalists close to the center-right leader separately said they believed Berlusconi was about to step down.
“That Silvio Berlusconi is about to step down is now clear to everybody, it’s a matter of hours, some say minutes,” Giuliano Ferrara, the respected editor of the Il Foglio daily and a confidante of Berlusconi, said in a video posted on the newspaper’s website.
Another journalist for center-right daily Libero, Franco Bechis, also said on Twitter that Berlusconi was about to resign.
The FTSE MIB index was up 2.6 percent, after earlier shedding more than 2 percent, with traders citing the resignation talk for the turnaround.