By Valentina Za
MILAN, June 8 (Reuters) – Italy’s biggest banking group Intesa Sanpaolo said on Monday it has made a €30.6 billion ($35 billion) unsolicited cash-and-share bid to buy smaller rival Monte dei Paschi di Siena (MPS) in Italy’s biggest banking deal ever.
MPS, which the state bailed out in 2017 and reprivatised in 2023-2024, has been a target of domestic bank mergers since becoming the main investor in insurer Generali last year, a coveted asset in Italian finance.
Intesa said its offer entailed a premium of 12.5% versus the closing share price of MPS on Friday, which gave MPS a market value of €27.4 billion.
Intesa’s move sidelines Banco BPM, which has long been the leading candidate to merge with MPS. Amid mounting expectations of an Intesa bid, Banco BPM said on Sunday it wanted to open talks with MPS about a potential merger.
Under Italian takeover rules, however, Intesa’s formal bid now prevents MPS from agreeing a deal BPM without prior shareholder approval.
MPS has a scheduled board meeting later on Monday and the bank said it will not comment on Intesa or BPM until its board discusses the matter at the meeting.
Intesa said the deal would create the euro zone’s second- largest banking group after Santander.
UNIPOL DEAL
Intesa secured a fifth of the Italian banking market when it bought mid-sized UBI back in 2020, leapfrogging UniCredit to become Italy’s largest bank.
Citing antitrust limits, Intesa has kept out of a wave of mergers and acquisitions in Italy’s banking sector that began in November 2024, with CEO Carlo Messina describing it as “the Wild West”.
To address competition issues, Intesa said on Monday it had struck a deal with insurer Unipol to sell a banking business comprising 635 MPS branches – roughly half the total – and MPS’ central offices in Siena, if its bid is successful.
Unipol is the main investor in BPER Banca and an Intesa ally. It had played a similar role in the UBI deal, buying branches to help Intesa gain antitrust approval while supporting BPER’s expansion.
Unipol said it would pay up to €3.5 billion for the deal and combine it with BPER to create a bank that would operate under the name Banca Monte dei Paschi, the world’s oldest bank.
GENERALI STAKES
Intesa said the combined entity would have a market capitalisation of €126 billion and a net income goal of €16 billion in 2029, up from last year’s combined profits of €13.6 billion.
MPS’ stake in insurer Generali – which it acquired on buying Mediobanca last year – is of interest to Intesa, whose business model is focused on wealth management and insurance. It had attempted to buy Generali in 2017, but dropped the plan and grew its insurance business internally.
Messina told an analyst call Intesa would retain Mediobanca and its brand, as well as the Generali stake.
Intesa’s move deals a potential a blow to UniCredit, which last year built a large stake in Generali with CEO Andrea Orcel saying the bank “would observe” the situation.
Intesa said on Monday it would also take a 3% stake in Generali for accounting purposes.
($1 = 0.8667 euros)
(Reporting by Valentina Za in Milan and Gursimran Kaur in Bengaluru; Editing by Tom Hogue, Jamie Freed and Susan Fenton)
By Valentina Za | Reuters | © Copyright Thomson Reuters 2026.
