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Monte dei Paschi di Siena has launched €13.3bn takeover offer for rival Mediobanca in a move that would shake up Italy’s banking sector.
The offer, announced on Friday, values Milanese group Mediobanca’s shares at €15.99 each, a 5 per cent premium to their closing price on Thursday.
MPS has a market capitalisation of around €9bn while Mediobanca’s equity is worth €12.7bn.
The Italian government is privatising Tuscany’s MPS, in which it is the single largest shareholder. It sold a 15 per cent stake in the bank in November and had planned to merge it with Banco BPM before UniCredit launched a takeover offer over for its Milanese rival.
Among the new MPS investors were Delfin, the holding company of the Del Vecchio family, and construction tycoon Francesco Gaetano Caltagirone. They are also Mediobanca’s largest shareholders, and have been at odds with its chief executive Alberto Nagel.
Under the terms of the offer, Mediobanca investors would receive 23 new shares in MPS for every 10 Mediobanca shares they hold, the Tuscan lender said in a statement on Friday.
This is a developing story
