Here’s how Credit Agricole seduces Fitd on Carige (goodbye Bper?)
Carige Dossier: facts, names, numbers and rumors on the Credit Agricole offer under consideration by the Fitd Fund as well as that of Bper
Here are the latest news on the Carige dossier.
WHAT HAPPENS TO THE CARIGE TITLE
Another session in the spotlight for Banca Carige in Piazza Affari. The shares of the Ligurian bank rose by 5.48% to € 0.8428, with a maximum reached at € 0.847, when Ftse Mib and Ftse All Share rose by 0.19% and 0.14% respectively. Exchanges were lively: over 2.8 million shares changed hands, compared to an average of 1.3 million over the last 30 days for the entire session.
THE CARIGE MATCH BETWEEN BPER AND AGRICULTURAL CREDIT
The stock remains in the spotlight with the market seeing a solution on the M&A front approaching. According to what the newspapers reported today – in the wake of an indiscretion from Ansa last night – the Interbank Fund (Fidt), which is an 80% shareholder of Carige, has received at least three offers for the institute and on Monday it will be known who is the subject chosen to negotiate the transaction between Bper, Credit Agricole Italia and the Cerberus fund (of which Sole 24 Ore speaks with certainty today).
THE MOVES OF AGRICULTURAL CREDIT ON CARIGE
According to indiscretions, the request for recapitalization – an operation in preparation for the sale of Carige – of the Italian-French bank would be less than 700 million euros, when Bper has already rejected a hypothesis of recapitalization of one billion euros, a sum under which you would also find the Cerberus request.
Meanwhile, the only official words from the Interbank Fund arrived yesterday evening and only indicated that 'the Fund has received preliminary and non-binding offers, subject, among others, to the performance of verification and due diligence activities and which contemplate the granting of exclusive rights'.
THE ROLE OF ADVISORS
The Fitd note does not mention names of bidders but comes in the aftermath of the indiscretions on a proposal received by the Fund from the French bank, which in Italy already conquered Creval last year, and which would move with the same advisors, Jp Morgan and BonelliErede: "The Fitd does not consider it appropriate to comment on the content of these rumors, nor to correct some inaccurate quantitative indications contained therein".
INDISCRIPTIONS ON AGRICULTURAL CREDIT
The rumors circulated yesterday speak of a request from Agricole for about 700 million dowry, therefore less than the billion requested by Bper, underlined the Corriere della Sera : "Both would then launch a takeover bid on the free float: Bper offers 0.80 euros, value to which the price of the Genoese shares was aligned yesterday, up by 4.58% in a day marked by the decline in Piazza Affari (Ftse Mib closed at -1.8%) ".
HOW THE AGRICULTURAL CREDIT WILL MOVE ON CARIGE
Even the French bank led in Italy by Giampiero Maioli has entrenched itself behind a "no comment". But it is clear that the proposal would be an alternative to that announced by Bper a month ago. On 13 December Maioli, speaking at the Fabi conference, ruled out new risky moves: «Within a few months, around 20-25 April, we incorporate Creval, which is an important IT migration. And at the end of the year we incorporate FriulAdria, so only in 2022 we have two mergers, not a few. Today we have no other dossiers ».
THE ANALYSIS OF THE CORRIERE DELLA SERA ON CARIGE-FITD
The Fitd has statutory limits to the so-called "preventive interventions" in the banks, which are calculated by the experts in precisely 650-700 million, Corriere della Sera added : "A possible ok to the proposal of the Modenese institute led by Piero Montani could lead to intervention for example of the Fitd Voluntary Scheme, therefore a sort of collection between banks. The larger institutions would be in favor of the Bper solution (which is supported by its first shareholder, Unipol) and in this direction, for example, the president of Intesa Sanpaolo, Gian Maria Gros-Pietro, expressed himself in recent weeks. The smaller institutions, on the other hand, turn up their noses because a further outlay would weigh on the accounts, to the full advantage of a direct competitor ".
WHAT THE REPUBLIC IS WRITING ABOUT CARIGE AND AGRICULTURAL CREDIT
The possible descent into the field of Credit Agricole would bring back the historic alliance between Carige and the French credit world, at the time through the system of savings banks, long allies of the then first shareholder – the Carige Foundation – in the defense of “Genoese”, wrote the newspaper La Repubblica : “Today Credit Agricole, by conquering Carige, would give life to a Ligurian bank, taking into account that it already controls Carispe, the Cassa di Spezia, while Carige now controls Genoa, Imperia and Savona”.
THE CRACK IN THE BOTTOM
However, there are tensions at the top of the Interbank Deposit Protection Fund (Fitd) on the Carige dossier (Fitd is the main shareholder of Carige with 80%, to which it adds 8.3% in the hands of Cassa Centrale Banca). Bper's offer split the board of the Fund: on the one hand, the big banks, willing to close the Carige grain as soon as possible, in order to get out of the capital; on the other hand, medium and small banks, with the former fearful of the advance of Bper as the third aggregating pole (there are institutions that would have similar ambitions to those of Bper such as Banco Bpm) and the latter – the small ones – trying to win more income and less burdens from the transaction with Bper for the Fund. Both medium and small – whispered in Abi circles – are waiting for other suitors for Carige: the proposal of the French group attracts them a lot.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/economia/ecco-come-il-credit-agricole-seduce-il-fitd-su-carige-addio-bper/ on Fri, 07 Jan 2022 09:16:50 +0000.