In a session marked by sell-offs, against the Ftse Mib index which marks a drop of up to -3.80%, the UniCredit stock limits the damage with a decline that, at 16.30 Italian time, is equal to -2 , 50%.
To put a stop to sales on the bank’s stock led by CEO Andrea Orcel is the spread of some rumors, according to which Piazza Gae Aulenti is no longer interested in the purchase of the Russian Otkritie.
This is what the Russian website Kommersant reported, underlining that, in a situation of strong tensions between Vladimir Putin’s Russia and the West on the Ukraine factor, Orcel & Co. would not want to run the risk of sanctions, which would be very high.
It must be said that the market immediately rejected UCG’s interest in the Russian bank which, according to the Banki.ru website, is the seventh largest bank in Russia, led by former Russian Finance Minister Mikhail Zadornov .
It was the Bloomberg news agency, at the beginning of January, that reported the rumor that UniCredit had “hired a consultant to examine the books of the group based in Moscow”, with the aim of “completing the review. within the following weeks.
UniCredit has more than 4,000 employees in Russia, and generated a turnover of 384 million euros in the country in the first nine months of 2021.
Oktritie was also defined by the Italian press as a Russian MPS, a factor that had not just displaced various market operators.
The institution was nationalized in a massive bailout operation by the Bank of Russia, the Russian central bank, in 2017: Otkritie was the first and also the largest Russian bank that was bailed out by the institution in the years 2017-2018. , as part of a plan launched by the governor Elvira Nabiullina, to give stability to a financial system that had embarked on risky projects, without having sufficient capital buffers.
Otkritie, it must be said, received a slap in the face from the likes of Goldman Sachs Group, Morgan Stanley and Bank of America.
The three Wall Street giants refused to help the Russian central bank draw up a plan for either privatization, as the risks associated with the project, in their view, would exceed the amount of potential fees.
In commenting on UniCredit’s alleged interest in Otkritie, Equita SIM analysts had referred to a non-negligible execution risk, writing that the M&A transaction would have significantly increased “exposure to a country with a high geopolitical risk. “.
The fear linked to the geopolitical tensions between the Western world and Vladimir Putin’s Russia, in particular the fear of an imminent Russian invasion of Ukraine, is among the factors that are today destroying the sentiment of operators, who choose safe-haven currencies.