No MPS and for now the takeover bid on Banco BPM is frozen: what will Andrea Orcel, number one at UniCredit, decide to do? Maybe to aim abroad?
This is what Il Sole 24 Ore speculates in today’s article, entitled: “UniCredit rethinks the flight abroad, like Profumo in ’99”.
The reference is to when in 1999 the takeover bid that UniCredit launched on Comit was “stopped by the Authorities and the rest of the banking system”: the then CEO Alessandro Profumo decided at that point to focus on Central-Eastern Europe, incorporating the Polish Bank Pekao.
Now that it is under the leadership of Orcel, given – as Il Sole 24 Ore writes – the double system stop on Mps and BancoBpm “, will UniCredit focus on some foreign bank?
According to the Confindustria newspaper, Andrea Orcel is evaluating “whether it is not the case to go back to following that path again: putting growth abroad before that in Italy, taking note of the ‘environmental’ difficulties of a sector in which buildings of politics seem to continue to have a role of underground interdiction on this or that aggregation “.
The takeover bid on Banco BPM which, according to Orcel’s initial plans, could have been launched by UniCredit as early as last weekend, would have been frozen following the fleeting moment lost by the CEO, as has been written, and the consequent leap of the title of the potential prey that, in the wake of the leak, pointed decisively upwards.
The leak led “analysts and investors”, explains Il Sole – to start “making their assessments on what was the value of BancoBpm in the event of a UniCredit offer by comparing financial statements and prospects”. But “in Piazza Gae Aulenti they consider these evaluations not congruous, it has been understood in recent days, but no one wants to talk”.
The UniCredit stock is today under pressure in Piazza Affari, it drops almost 1% at 9.25 am Italian time, while Banco BPM accuses the deflating of its speculative appeal, losing more than 1%.