Banks Banco BPM resists takeover by Unicredit

The major Italian bank Unicredit is on a shopping spree. But it is encountering resistance from takeover candidates. This is also evident in the latest case.

The major Italian bank Unicredit is encountering resistance with its takeover bid for its domestic rival Banco BPM. The offer had not been agreed and was not in line with the development of the bank itself, Banco BPM announced in Milan on Tuesday.

The conditions of the offer in no way reflected the profitability and the potential for value creation. Unicredit boss Andrea Orcel is also trying to acquire the German Commerzbank.

At the beginning of the week, Unicredit had offered 0.175 treasury shares per Banco BPM share. With just over 1.5 billion Banco BPM shares, this would correspond to around 265 million Unicredit shares.

Unicredit would have to increase its capital by around 16 percent. A BPM share was valued only slightly higher in the course of the bid than at the close of trading before the weekend.

However, Orcel emphasized that the premium was around 15 percent compared to the price on November 6. At that time, Banco BPM had announced its intention to take over the asset manager Anima.

Unicredit had recently secured a little more than a fifth of Commerzbank and is interested in taking over its German competitor. The German government and Commerzbank itself have positioned themselves against a takeover by the Italians.

According to Orcel, he wants to wait for the formation of a new government in Berlin after the end of the traffic light coalition. The probability of a deal is therefore lower than he had previously thought, he said the day before.

SDA