Intesa Sanpaolo launched a surprise offer of 4.86 billion euros on UBI Banca, initiating a long-awaited consolidation movement in the Italian banking sector. The number one retail bank in Italy, Intesa said on Monday evening that it was offering 1.7 new shares for each UBI share. Its objective is to create a European-scale player in wealth management and insurance, with outstanding deposits of more than 1100 billion euros. Such a marriage would give birth to the seventh bank in the euro zone by assets with a cumulative profit estimated at more than 6 billion euros in 2022, according to Intesa.
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" The banking sector is heading towards consolidation in the coming years (...) It is in Intesa's interest to reach the size that will allow it to be competitive (...) in Europe ", a said the establishment in a press release. If its offer is successful, Intesa plans to quickly remove UBI from the stock market and finalize the transaction by the end of the year. UBI shares soared 22% in the first exchanges on the Milan Stock Exchange while the Intesa share gained more than 2%. To overcome potential competitive challenges, Intesa announced the signing of an agreement to sell 400 to 500 branches of the merged entity to BPER Banca and possibly UBI assets in insurance at UnipolSai.
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BPER announced for its part the launch of a capital increase of one billion euros to finance this transaction.nIntesa said it had set its sights on UBI, the fifth Italian bank, because of the proximity of their models and the establishment of UBI in the north of Italy, the richest part of the country. UBI did not react immediately. A source close to Intesa said that no agreement had been reached before the offer was announced but that this transaction was not hostile. The Italian banking sector is often considered too fragmented, which weakens its establishments due to their high exposure to an apathetic local economy.
