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Who pays, and what gives?

If politics is the art of who gets what, when and how, the looming battle over the next EU budget is the ultimate test of bloc negotiations. And it’s about to get heated, writes Paola Tamma.

Context: Last year, the European Commission proposed a €2tn framework for the bloc’s next seven-year budget, due to begin in 2028. The plan would shift spending towards new priorities such as defence and economic competitiveness, at the expense of traditional items including agricultural subsidies and cohesion funds.

The Cypriot presidency of the Council of the EU, which is leading the negotiations, is expected this week to produce a “negotiating box” setting out how funding should be allocated across different priorities ahead of a summit of EU leaders next week.

The expectation among diplomats is that Cyprus will propose only a modest reduction, in the low decimals, to the overall budget. The cuts would fall more heavily on defence, competitiveness and the EU’s global reach than on traditional policies.

That would broadly align with the wishes of a majority of member states, including most net recipients of EU funds as well as Italy and Spain, which last month called for stronger support for traditional priorities.

But net contributors such as Germany, Austria, the Netherlands, Sweden and Denmark want larger cuts and argue reductions should be spread evenly across spending areas to preserve funding for security and growth.

“Such a proposal would be understood as putting traditional spending areas off limits [from cuts] and show that [the EU budget’s] modernisation and competitiveness agenda is only of secondary importance,” said an EU diplomat.

It would amount to “mowing down modernisation and protecting vested interests”, they added.

The two camps are also divided over how to finance EU spending. One group wants to roll over common debt incurred during the pandemic and scrap the contribution rebates enjoyed by several net contributors. Opponents argue the savings would be limited and insist the rebates should remain.

The aim is to reach a deal by the end of the year, before a packed 2027 election calendar that includes France, Italy and Poland.

How national capitals react to Cyprus’s proposal will provide an early indication of whether that timetable is achievable.

EU diplomats openly refer to the initial proposal as a “sacrificial lamb” that will be ripped up but will frame the subsequent wrangling.

“We know that this is not the final landing zone, but it is a crucial milestone. What we’ll present will be decisive . . . for member states . . . to start shifting their initial positions,” said another EU diplomat.

An Intesa victory might be appealing to Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni

Italian M&A often has as much to do with politics and personalities as it does with maximising profit. That makes Banca Intesa’s proposed €30bn acquisition of Monte dei Paschi di Siena a welcome rarity.

Intesa has picked the right target, in the sense that Tuscany-based lender MPS’s standalone prospects are not great. It is grappling with the complex integration of uppity rival Mediobanca, which it acquired last year. And its governance is as fragile as they come: sparring shareholders recently ousted and reinstated chief executive Luigi Lovaglio in rapid-fire succession. MPS trades at less than its tangible book value last week, on S&P Capital IQ numbers, making it cheap by European bank standards.

Intesa is in a great position to buy. Italy’s largest bank by assets has teamed up with insurer Unipol to carve up MPS’s retail network in hopes of avoiding competition issues. Even so, it thinks it can cut €1.1bn of overlapping costs from the parts it is acquiring, on top of the €400mn MPS was hoping to save in expenses and funding costs from its acquisition of Mediobanca.

For reference, mid-market rival Banco BPM, which on Sunday wrote to MPS’s board to propose a merger of equals, only thinks it can cut €650mn from the combination. That makes Intesa’s proposed transaction one which creates a lot of value, even excluding any benefits from cross-selling products and the like.

Whether Intesa can carry MPS off at this price will largely depend on fellow Milanese lender UniCredit. The bank, led by veteran M&A banker Andrea Orcel, is engaged in a tortuous battle to buy Germany’s Commerzbank. But Orcel may be tempted to wade into this battle too, rather than watch Italian rivals get bigger in his home market. Other Italian growth options are hard to come by: Banco BPM, which Orcel recently tried to buy, is 20 per cent owned by Crédit Agricole.

Intesa will be hard to beat: it could sweeten its bid by a couple of billion without destroying value, Lex calculates. But finance does not tell the full story. Should the bank be successful, it will also end up with Mediobanca’s 13 per cent stake in insurer Generali, widely seen as a strategic Italian asset.

For that reason, an Intesa victory might also be appealing to Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni — in that it reduces the chances of Generali falling into foreign hands. The difference from other Rome-pleasing deals is that Italian capitalism would be able to consider this one a win as well.

AstraZeneca advances weight-loss pill to take aim at obesity leaders

Pill from drugmaker would put it into competition with market leaders Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly

AstraZeneca has moved a step closer to joining the fiercely competitive field of weight-loss treatments after data showed patients lost nearly 12 per cent of their body weight in a mid-stage clinical trial.

The Anglo-Swedish group said participants in a phase 2 trial shed 11.8 per cent of their weight after 36 weeks on elecoglipron, a daily GLP-1 pill. Those who used the drug for 26 weeks lost 10.5 per cent of their weight, compared with 0.6 per cent on a placebo.

Patients in the trial experienced the common gastrointestinal challenges — nausea, diarrhoea and vomiting — associated with the GLP-1 class of drugs, AstraZeneca said.

The group said it would progress the drug to a phase 3 trial, which will evaluate it as a treatment for people with obesity with and without type 2 diabetes. This final-stage trial will also study the drug as a monotherapy and in combination with a type 2 diabetes medication.

AstraZeneca’s pill would put it in competition with oral weight-loss drugs made by industry leaders Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly when it reaches the market, although its performance so far lags behind the promised weight loss on offer for both of their drugs.

Novo Nordisk’s Wegovy pill, which last year became the first oral weight-loss treatment to be approved, delivered an average weight loss of about 17 per cent of body weight at 64 weeks. Lilly’s Foundayo, which was approved by the US regulator in April, provided 12.4 per cent weight loss.

AstraZeneca’s entry into the market would mark the latest effort by a big pharma group in a therapeutic area that analysts predict could be worth about $200bn by 2030. The group said its drug was not expected on the market until after 2027.

New York-based Pfizer has also unveiled new data showing its shot offered similar or better weight loss to the drugs sold by Novo and Lilly. Pfizer jumped into the weight-loss market last year with a $10bn splash by acquiring start-up biotech Metsera.

Pfizer was forced to pay a high price for Metsera after a bidding war with Novo Nordisk that escalated into one of the biggest corporate battles in 2025.

Pfizer has been struggling to boost sales since 2022 as fewer people have taken Covid-19 vaccines and its share price has tumbled. The group is now hoping to crack the weight-loss market with a shot that can be given weekly or monthly, which would require fewer injections than the weekly injections on the market.

The shot would give patients options “to choose your own adventure”, said Navin Katyal, a Pfizer president who spoke on Saturday as the company’s data was released at an American Diabetes Association conference. Control over the dosing frequency, he said, “that resonates really, really well with consumers and providers”.

Pfizer said it expected to finish more testing for its weight-loss drug next year and anticipates getting its first regulatory approvals by the first half of 2028. The company’s shares are up 5 per cent in 2026.

Meanwhile, Swiss giant Roche announced at the same conference that patients on its experimental enicepatide injectable lost an average of 22.7 per cent of their body weight after 48 weeks in a mid-stage trial.

Lilly, the leader in US weight-loss and diabetes prescriptions, also unveiled new data showing its next-generation weight-loss drug retatrutide helped people with knee pain and sleep apnoea. Shares in Lilly were up 3 per cent in early US trading, putting them at an all-time high.

Kenneth Custer, an executive vice-president at Lilly, told the FT that new competition in weight loss “is great for patients”. “Historically, competition is what has fuelled scientific progress,” he said. “We welcome competition.”

The Holme, set in four acres in Regent’s Park, previously sold for £139mn in 2024

The mystery owner of one of London’s priciest mansions is nearing a deal to sell it at a sharp increase to the price they paid less than two years ago.

The Regent’s Park mansion known as the Holme is being sold for approximately £190mn, according to people familiar with the matter, marking one of London’s most expensive house purchases ever.

The seller had paid £139mn to buy the 40-bedroom residence out of receivership in 2024. It was previously owned by Saudi royals.

Contracts have been exchanged and the deal is likely to complete in the coming weeks, the people said. The residence had not been publicly listed for sale.

The Holme’s buyer in 2024 has never come to light, having been hidden behind a trust company provided by a corporate services provider. The identity of the buyer in the current transaction is not publicly known either, according to the people familiar with the deal.

The anonymity comes despite efforts by the UK government to enhance the transparency of the high-end property market, where owners have long remained hidden behind trust structures and shell companies.

In the 2024 deal, the Holme was sold to a UK subsidiary of Zedra, a corporate service and wealth management firm that runs trusts on behalf of various clients, the FT previously reported, citing UK land records.

The UK created a register of overseas entities after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 to help the government crack down on mystery owners. The register requires individuals who own British property through offshore vehicles to register such entities and publicly reveal their ownership at Companies House.

The trust company that has directly owned the Holme since 2024 — Zedra Trust Company (UK) Limited — is registered in the UK. It did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

“The UK has made real progress on property ownership transparency in recent years — but trusts remain a significant blind spot,” said Ben Cowdock, senior investigations lead at campaign group Transparency International UK.

He added that, when a property is owned by a trust, “it is almost impossible to find out who actually owns it”, meaning that “high-value property in this country can be, and is, used to hide wealth with very little scrutiny”.

The Holme, which has a four-acre private garden, is located not far from the US ambassador’s home. It is owned on a long lease from the Crown Estate.

UK Sotheby’s International Realty was involved with the current transaction, according to people familiar with the matter. It declined to comment.

Despite its hefty price tag, the Holme ranks below London’s most expensive house sale, which took place earlier this year when property developer and Reform UK party treasurer Nick Candy sold his Chelsea mansion for more than £275mn to Suneil Setiya, founder of trading firm Quadrature Capital.

Transaction is one of the largest private credit fundraisings, fuelling the Claude maker’s AI growth plans

Apollo and Blackstone have finalised a $35bn private credit deal that will help finance Anthropic’s growth plans, as banks and investment groups across Wall Street pour capital into the AI boom.

The two private investment groups led the financing, one of the largest private credit deals completed, which will fund Anthropic’s purchase of Alphabet-developed chips.

It underscores the massive appetite investors have for AI and the deep pockets they are willing to dig into to finance the data centre infrastructure and computing power needed by companies including Anthropic, OpenAI and Meta.

Yet the deal, dubbed project “Big Sky”, comes amid concerns that the AI frenzy has overheated the broader market. Shares in chipmakers rebounded on Monday after tumbling last week, led by Broadcom’s fall in market value.

It adds to a deluge of chip-backed loans that sparked debate over how quickly graphics processing units would depreciate as AI technology evolves.

Apollo and Blackstone declined to comment.

The transaction wrapped up days after Alphabet completed one of the largest equity offerings in history, as it looks to raise $85bn to fund Google’s AI build-out, and as SpaceX prepares for a flotation that could raise a record $86bn. Anthropic is readying its initial public offering, following its blockbuster $65bn private financing round.

The AI borrowing spree has reached beyond traditional US capital markets, with Amazon raising C$14bn (US$10bn) on Monday in the largest Canadian dollar bond sale. The company confirmed the bond sale to the FT.

Anthropic’s deal with Apollo and Blackstone relies on a complex structure that private investment groups routinely use to finance start-ups with backing from blue-chip companies. A special purpose vehicle formed by Apollo’s Atlas SP Partners raised the debt and equity, with lease agreements for the chips ultimately supporting the value of the transaction, said people briefed on the matter.

Apollo and Blackstone structured the loan across three tranches, with interest payments on the two senior segments backstopped by Broadcom. The chipmaker is making the so-called tensor processing units, or TPUs, with Google. Its agreement to provide support if Anthropic misses an interest payment helped vastly reduce the costs on the debt.

The two senior portions of the debt were split between banks and investors. Some $6bn of so-called A1 notes were sold to banks with an interest rate 1 percentage point over Treasuries. A further $24bn was sold on to investors in asset-backed credit markets, priced with a yield of 5.75 per cent.

The $4.5bn of junior debt, which is not supported by Broadcom and therefore exposes lenders more acutely to Anthropic, carried an interest rate of 8.5 per cent. Investors were also offered an original issue discount of 98 cents to 99 cents on the dollar depending on cheque sizes.

Morgan Stanley, which advised Broadcom and arranged the transaction, also lent to investors participating in the deal. Morgan Stanley declined to comment.

Investors pitched on the deal were not given early access to Anthropic’s financials ahead of its IPO, said people familiar with the arrangement. Some investors passed on the deal over the delayed-draw format of the debt, which drives down yields because the money can be withdrawn in multiple tranches over a period of time.

Broadcom chief executive Hock Tan last week said the company hoped to connect “investor partners with the strongest balance sheets to deliver at scale sufficient compute capacity at the lowest cost”, pointing to the deal with Apollo and Blackstone as the first of many transactions to come.

Industry needs ‘champions’, not intervention, says Christophe Fouquet, head of Europe’s biggest listed company

The head of Europe’s most valuable company has warned the EU against intervening directly in semiconductor supply chains, arguing that reducing reliance on foreign technology requires building stronger companies on the continent.

“If you don’t have your own supply chain, then how do you intervene [in the supply chain]?” Christophe Fouquet, chief executive of Dutch chip equipment maker ASML, told the FT.

Only about 1 per cent of ASML’s sales are in Europe, compared to about 80 per cent in Asia. That made ASML very “exposed”, Fouquet said, “because the natural business is being very close to your customer”.

His comments come days after the EU unveiled plans for a new chips strategy, including emergency powers to direct supplies during shortages and measures aimed at strengthening Europe’s semiconductor industry.

As Brussels seeks to reduce its dependence on US technology companies and Asian manufacturers, policymakers are increasingly weighing industrial intervention against efforts to create the conditions for European companies to grow and compete globally.

“People say: ‘let’s buy European first’,” said Fouquet, who became ASML’s chief in 2024. “I think it’s great, but you have got to have something to buy from.”

France and others are also pushing for more “buy European” clauses in public procurement, while critics argue that European preferences have little effect if Europe lacks competitive domestic alternatives.

Fouquet said Europe needs to build as “many champions as possible” across the semiconductor supply chain and increase Europe’s share of global chip activity closer to its roughly 18 per cent share of world GDP.

But Europe must also avoid regulations that drive promising companies abroad, Fouquet stressed.

ASML is among a group of European technology companies lobbying Brussels to ease regulatory burdens, particularly in AI. He highlighted lengthy permitting procedures, access to capital and the bloc’s AI regulation as obstacles facing his business.

Fouquet said there remained “a temptation that is too strong for the Commission to try to do the industry’s job”, citing plans to develop data centres and chip fabrication plants.

Demand from AI data centres is outpacing manufacturers’ ability to increase production. As the supplier of its extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography machines used to manufacture the world’s most advanced chips, Fouquet said the company prepared for the surge in demand and is planning further expansion while boosting the productivity of its machines.

The company is expanding near its headquarters in Veldhoven in the Netherlands and plans to increase output of its newest EUV machines by 50 per cent this year.

But he said it still takes about four years to build a factory in Europe because of planning constraints and lengthy permitting processes. Finding and training staff and expanding its supply network also constrained growth, he added.

Beyond expanding production, the French chief executive said ASML could play a larger role as an investor in Europe’s tech scene.

After investing in French AI company Mistral and German optical company Zeiss, Fouquet said the company was looking for more opportunities both within and beyond its traditional supply chains.

“As the company becomes more wealthy, we of course have more means to do that,” he said. “I can promise you that we will be looking at more opportunities to do that because it’s a good thing. First for the company, for people and ultimately for Europe.”

Lack of detail on why Albert Manifold was fired sows doubts over culture overhaul

Top BP investors and former executives are concerned the UK oil major may lose momentum over the aggressive cost-cutting and restructuring plan driven by former chair Albert Manifold before his abrupt exit last month. 

Shareholders told the FT they remained in the dark about the precise circumstances that led to the departure of the 63-year-old Irish executive, and some feared his strategy had made enemies inside an organisation that was resistant to his changes. 

“He was aggressively instituting change and that made the bureaucracy uncomfortable,” said one leading investor. “Were people trying to get him out of the door? That is our and many other investors’ concern.”

Manifold was hired last year to shake up BP and planned to simplify and sell off large parts of the energy major, overhaul the company’s board of directors and cut costs. 

In a statement after his departure, in which he took aim at the company’s culture of “excessive expenditure”, including chauffeurs, private jets and corporate tickets to sporting events, Manifold said “it felt to me that my priorities were not always shared by everyone”. 

BP said Manifold was fired for “unacceptable conduct”, with some people close to the company alleging that his behaviour at times amounted to “bullying”. Manifold has described the claims as “lies”.

Per Lekander, founder of hedge fund manager Clean Energy Transition, said BP had been “a reasonably mismanaged kingdom for the past 30 years”.

“Culture tends to be one of the most stable things in an organisation,” Lekander added. “Of course, when someone tries to do something about it, when you start a row in the kingdom, the king or the princes object to it.”

Investors who spoke to BP said the oil group had pledged to continue with Manifold’s strategy of simplifying the company, but added that they would like further clarity. 

“Details were limited, given both the timely nature of the meeting and the sensitivity of aspects of the allegations,” said Stuart Riddick, senior sustainable investment manager at Aberdeen, who spoke with the company shortly after Manifold’s departure.

Riddick said the asset manager “would like to know more about the governance standards and oversight issues cited by the board”.

At the time of Manifold’s sacking, BP’s interim chair Ian Tyler said the board had “deep conviction” in the strategy advanced by Manifold and was “moving at pace to deliver it”.

The controversy has reopened longstanding questions about BP’s corporate culture. One former BP executive, who said they had no direct knowledge of what had transpired, suggested that it was possible Manifold’s enemies had lobbied against him. “That place was always a nest of vipers,” they said. 

One person close to BP said the company had been unable to give full details of Manifold’s dismissal because it has a duty of care towards the staff who complained about the former chair. “Everyone wants the colour, and the company will not give it because it would not be fair to the complainants,” they said. 

A person close to Manifold previously suggested that BP company secretary Ben Mathews, one of the longest-standing senior figures at the oil major, had been a “driver” of BP’s decision to remove Manifold.

Mathews has taken time off since Manifold was ousted, after having dealt with the departures of both previous chair Helge Lund and Manifold in rapid succession. Tyler has declined to comment on specific employees or situations, beyond reiterating they removed Manifold for “unacceptable conduct”.

Matthew Lofting, an analyst at JPMorgan, wrote in a note on Friday that he had met BP chief executive Meg O’Neill and that her “overarching message was that the chair has necessarily changed, but [BP’s] strategic direction hasn’t”. 

BP laid out its current plan in February 2025, before Manifold’s arrival at the company, and has so far cut $2.8bn of costs, against an initial target of $4bn to $5bn by 2027. Activist investor Elliott, which took a near-5 per cent stake in the oil major, has urged the company to go further, and in March BP increased its target to $6.5bn to $7.5bn of cuts.

A spokesperson for BP said: “We remain firmly focused on cost discipline and delivering value for our shareholders.”

One investor said the recent boardroom upheaval would keep BP under scrutiny, making any backsliding difficult, as “cost would have been front and centre of Meg’s appointment”.

Other investors said governance concerns were outweighed by the windfall the company was reaping from high oil prices.

“It’s less consequential who is in the chairman role,” said Brian Kersmanc at GQG Partners, which increased its shareholding in the wake of Manifold’s departure. 

“People are so myopically focused on what’s happening within the board that they are missing the forest for the trees . . . if oil stays anywhere near $100 a barrel in terms of pricing, the free cash flow these guys are going to generate is going to be off the charts,” he added. 

“At the end of the day, we vote with our shares. If we see the business is heading in a different direction, we’ll change course.”

Monte dei Paschi emerged from public ownership to become an improbable consolidator. Intesa and BPM have it in their sights

For a few hours on Sunday, executives at Monte dei Paschi di Siena thought they had dodged a bullet. As rumours swirled that Intesa Sanpaolo was preparing to swoop on the Tuscan lender, a letter of interest from Banco BPM raised hopes that a rival bidder might persuade Italy’s biggest bank to hold off.

The relief did not last. Late in the evening, MPS chief executive Luigi Lovaglio received a call from his counterpart Carlo Messina: Intesa was going public with its bid the next morning.

“We worked on this transaction for a very long time. BPM tried to anticipate the real offer, which was our offer,” Messina said on a call with analysts on Monday.

“I like Giuseppe Castagna [the BPM chief executive], he’s a friend . . . he’s a great guy. But that [letter] is not an offer.”

Messina’s gambit values MPS at about €30.6bn, a 12.5 per cent premium to its closing price on Friday. The purchase would be funded through a mix of newly issued Intesa shares and cash, offering MPS investors 1.6 Intesa shares and €1 for each share they own.

But the proposal also comes with an unusual carve-out plan: Intesa has agreed the sale of the MPS brand, hundreds of branches and vital operating assets to BPER Banca’s main shareholder, insurer Unipol.

That would allow Intesa to retain the more profitable parts of the business — including investment bank Mediobanca and its prized 13 per cent stake in insurance company Generali — as well as to minimise competition concerns.

“This is basically Intesa buying MPS without buying MPS but only Mediobanca and its assets . . . which makes the drama over the past year [look rather pointless],” said one banking executive in Milan.

The move on MPS is the latest twist in a dizzying consolidation saga that has engulfed Italian banking since the government returned the lender to private hands in late 2024, seven years after bailing it out.

What followed has been a flurry of overlapping bids, shifting alliances and boardroom battles that demolished long-established power structures in Italian finance.

Through the course of last year, MPS emerged as an unlikely consolidator with its improbable — yet successful — pursuit of Mediobanca, while UniCredit, Banco BPM, Generali and a cast of influential shareholders were drawn into an increasingly tangled contest over who would control some of Italy’s most prized financial assets.

Yet the fate of MPS remains far from certain.

Unipol’s chief executive has sparked an outcry in Italy by disclosing plans to cut “di Siena” from Monte dei Paschi’s name should the deal succeed.

If Intesa does emerge victorious, the deal for MPS would create the second-largest banking group in the Eurozone by market capitalisation and cement Intesa’s dominance of Italian banking.

It would also solve a crucial issue for Rome: who has control over Generali, arguably the crown jewel and one of the largest investors in Italian government debt.

Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s government, which has long sought to prevent a foreign investor from gaining control of Generali, would support Intesa holding a major stake, said people familiar with the matter. Intesa’s CEO Messina was viewed as a “safe pair of hands” in Rome, one of the people said.

UniCredit has also built up a large stake in Generali over the past year and Rome sees the country’s two largest lenders as good long-term institutional investors in the insurer, the people said.

A sale to Intesa is also seen as preferable to a deal between Banco BPM and MPS, the people said, because of fears about Crédit Agricole’s increasing influence at BPM and worries that the French lender could attempt a full takeover in future.

But not everyone is averse to a deal with BPM. In November 2024, Meloni’s government sold BPM a 5 per cent block of MPS shares, part of a plan to create a “third pole” in Italian banking that would counterbalance the strength of Intesa and UniCredit and be more favourable to Rome.

Finance minister Giancarlo Giorgetti was an early backer of that plan — which was disrupted by UniCredit’s tilt at BPM, a deal the government ultimately scuppered — and still sees the outcome favourably, said people familiar with his thinking.

Although BPM’s expression of interest falls short of a formal offer, it has raised the possibility of an alternative transaction in the form of a merger of equals, rather than the de facto break-up envisaged under Intesa’s proposal.

Should BPM decide to table a competing bid, it would set the stage for a rare takeover battle in Italian banking, pitting two of the country’s largest lenders against each other for control of one of its most strategically important financial institutions.

MPS on Monday evening said its board would evaluate BPM’s letter and Intesa’s unsolicited offer. Depending on MPS’s response, BPM may then have to decide whether to proceed or shelve its proposal, according to people familiar with the discussions.

A battle for MPS threatens to overshadow the comeback of the bank’s chief executive, Lovaglio, who was ousted in a boardroom tussle in March only to be restored by investors in April.

Billionaire investor Francesco Gaetano Caltagirone, who is the second-largest shareholder in MPS, sought to oust Lovaglio and replace him with his close confidant Fabrizio Palermo. But other big shareholders — including Banco BPM — came to Lovaglio’s rescue.

That failed coup may have set the stage for Caltagirone, a skilled political operator in Rome, to lend his support to Intesa’s bid.

Messina said he had not discussed the offer with shareholders before launch. But several people familiar with the matter said the chief executive had been exploring a potential bid for MPS since at least January, holding talks with multiple people in Rome and Milan to discuss the idea and assess its political and financial feasibility.

The start of a fresh round of matchmaking between Italy’s financial institutions will also increase the pressure on the country’s best-known dealmaker to act.

UniCredit’s chief executive Andrea Orcel last year abandoned his bid for BPM following opposition from Meloni’s government. But the shifting sands of Italy’s banking landscape could play into UniCredit’s hands, said one Italian banking adviser.

“UniCredit could come back with an approach for BPM,” the adviser said. “UniCredit is weaker on the Italian side than Intesa, so it could reasonably say that it now wants BPM to boost its scale in Italy.”

Any suggestion that BPM’s largest shareholder, Crédit Agricole, might seek a full takeover could also swing the government behind UniCredit, they added.

“There is a possibility that Crédit Agricole would launch an offer for BPM. So we could even get to a point where the Italian government asks UniCredit to intervene to avoid a French takeover.”

Italy’s biggest banking players have repeatedly denied any interest in pursuing deals — yet they have proved unwilling to stay on the sidelines. The winner may end up being “the best poker player”, the Milanese banking executive said.

Messina for his part claims Intesa’s offer “is very attractive and benefits all shareholders” and could help transform the bank into “the Italian UBS”.

He added: “We never said we didn’t want to grow in Italy, but that antitrust rules prevented it.”