Unicredit, who supports and who does not for Orcel (and the wedding with Mps)
Facts, names and rumors about Unicredit, Mps and Orcel.
What happens on the Milan-Siena-Rome axis?
That is: what will happen to Unicredit (grappling with the succession of Jean-Pierre Mustier) and to Monte dei Paschi di Siena where the strong shareholder Tesoro tries in every way to avoid the definitive collapse?
So who will be the next CEO of Unicredit?
The financial world has set its sights on the past track record of one of the favorites to take over from Mustier at the head of the institute in Piazza Gae Aulenti.
Let's see why.
Let's start with Mps: the board of directors of last December 17 approved the new industrial plan signed by the managing director Guido Bastianini without giving details to the market on the content, explaining that it could have been radically changed during the confrontation between the Mef and the authorities European.
On January 12, however, some advances of the preliminary document were published in Repubblica, complete with numbers. On Friday evening after 11pm, the bank therefore sent a press release, at the request of Consob, to specify that the 2021-2025 strategic plan "takes into account the sale of the majority stake in the Treasury to which the government committed itself in 2017 and "Does not envisage a radical transformation of the bank's operating model and technological infrastructure that would involve significant investments, absorption of implementation capacity and high execution risks" but "instead, priority was given to initiatives capable of creating value as early as 2021" . In short, nothing new compared to what was read in Repubblica : so much so that the top of the Monte could avoid noises and criticisms of the scoop of the Repubblica journalist Andrea Greco.
Certainly, the Mef will have to discuss the plan with the DG Comp of the European Commission, for antitrust profiles relating to state aid, and the top management of Monte dei Paschi di Siena will have to submit the capital plan to the ECB by the end of January which will indicate the modalities with to satisfy a capital requirement of between 2 and 2.5 billion.
Who will put the money there? The Minister of Economy, Roberto Gualtieri, hoped in the arrival of Unicredit as a white knight and also Fabi, the main Italian banking union led by Lando Sileoni, hitherto opposed to the wedding, opens the merger in order to give "Clarity" to the prospects of the two banks and provided that the merger is "painless" for the workers ".
But the negotiations now seem to have come to a standstill. Also because the group from Piazza Gae Aulenti has yet to find the successor of the outgoing ad, Mustier.
In pole position to take the place of the French banker at the moment there seems to be Andrea Orcel who would also be appreciated by the shareholder Leonardo Del Vecchio and the shareholder foundations (Cariverona and Cassa Risparmio di Torino).
A perfect candidate, according to some (even for the Treasury? Who knows): Italian but with a curriculum and contacts of international standing. However, Orcel's wealth of experience risks being cumbersome also in light of possible negotiations to be restarted with Monte.
Because his name, for the Sienese, is still linked to Antonveneta's original sin: it was he, when he was still president of the "global markets & investment banking" division in the London office of Merrill Lynch, the director of the Abn Amro stew who delivered the Paduan bank to Banco Santander and then in November 2007 to Monte. Of which a month later, in December 2007, Merrill became joint global coordinator of the financing operation linked to the blitz on the Venetian bank.
The former president of MPS, Giuseppe Mussari, negotiated through Orcel with Emilio Botín, the great head of Santander who needed money to acquire the Dutch bank Abn Amro with Royal Bank Scotland and Fortis. So Botin sold in November 2007 to Mussari for 9 billion plus 7 billion in debt that Antonveneta that just four weeks earlier he had bought from Abn Amro for 6.6 billion. A circumstance which, they say in the salons of finance, must have cemented the bond between Orcel and the Botin family.
So much so that in September 2018 Ana Botin, Emilio's daughter who later became president of Santander, publicly promised him the appointment at the helm of the Spanish Bank with an entry bonus that the chronicles of the time say reached the stellar figure of 50 million euros. The thing seems done, in newspapers all over Europe there are celebratory articles with the profile of what someone went so far as to paint as "the Ronaldo of the bankers".
Too bad that the promised bonus is too high even for one of the largest banks in the world and that, despite Botin's announcement, the appointment will never see the light due to the opposition of the board. The case arouses such an outcry that Santander's shareholder funds come to ask for the head of the president who is forced to acknowledge the mistake and apologize publicly at the April 2019 shareholders' meeting.
As for Orcel, he unleashes a legal dispute that is still open which materializes in the request for 112 million in compensation from the Iberian bank.
Perhaps also for this past, yesterday in the Senate the leader of Italia Viva, Matteo Renzi, while scrambling Giuseppe Conte (who, however, did not fall or did not bend as the former prime minister hoped), hissed at those who "must buy Monte dei Paschi di Siena relying on the same consultants who twenty years ago already made enough messes ”.
However, if the final choice falls on Orcel, the Roman banker would work alongside the president Pier Carlo Padoan (still in pectore because his appointment must be approved by the shareholders in the spring assembly) with an equally cumbersome past because under him the Mef has took control of Rocca Salimbeni with the precautionary recapitalization and the institute became the "Monte di Stato".
The arrival of Padoan in Unicredit was therefore read by many observers as a prodromal to the marriage with that Monte which the Treasury does not know what to do, caught between the promises made to Europe during the rescue and a market operation that currently does not exist.
We must avoid that Mps is the new Capitalia for Unicredit, some analysts say. Well, who was at the helm of Merrill Lynch's Financial Institution Group team when he advised Unicredit on the purchase of Capitalia as an advisor? Andrea Orcel.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/economia/unicredit-chi-tifa-e-chi-no-per-orcel-e-le-nozze-con-mps/ on Wed, 20 Jan 2021 13:05:05 +0000.