Banca Generali Mulling Monte di Paschi’s $10 Billion Takeover Bid
The offer represented a 10% premium to Generali’s share price at the time
Italy’s Banca Generali G -0.39%decrease; down pointing triangle said it is willing to consider a $10.2 billion takeover offer from rival Monte di Paschi di Siena, the latest attempt at consolidation in the country’s banking sector.
MPS, considered Europe’s oldest lender still in operation, last week launched a joint bid for Generali and Banco BPM, offering 6.958 of its own shares for each Generali share to value the bank at 8.72 billion euros ($10.16 billion). It said at the time the bid represented a 10% premium to Generali’s share price.
Banca Generali BGN 0.23%increase; up pointing triangle said late Thursday it “confirmed its willingness to evaluate MPS’s proposal, which envisages a broader industrial collaboration to develop new growth opportunities across strategically important business areas for both companies.”
The private bank—majority owned by insurer Assicurazioni Generali—said it had launched a process to study the implication of the deal, which it said was unsolicited and hadn’t been agreed ahead of being made public.
BPM earlier this week said MPS’s bid, which values the bank at more than 25 billion euros, lacked a shareholder premium, according to an initial assessment. It said its board would continue to assess the offer.
The joint bid faces some daunting hurdles, including securing the backing of Assicurazioni Generali, Federated Hermes’ Filippo Alloatti wrote in a note Thursday.
“Monte dei Paschi would need to win over several skeptical shareholders,” Alloatti said. MPS said the enlarged group would become Italy’s third-largest by total assets with a pro forma balance sheet of around 466 billion euros.
MPS’s move follows its taking of majority control of lender Mediobanca following a surprise $19 billion bid early in 2025. But other consolidation attempts among Italian banks have run aground on shareholder opposition and execution snarls. Mediobanca—itself Assicurazioni Generali’s top shareholder—last year saw an offer for Banca Generali derailed by its own investors, who failed to approve the move after a top shareholder abstained from the vote.
MPS was itself the subject of a bidding war this summer when BPM and Intesa Sanpaolo launched rival merger bids, cementing Italy’s place at the center of dealmaking in European banking. UniCredit, one of Italy’s largest banks, has meanwhile been maneuvering to take control of Germany’s Commerzbank, securing nearly half of the target bank’s shares following a takeover push this year.