MPS relaunches bid for Mediobanca with €13.5bn partial-cash offer

Monte dei Paschi di Siena (MPS) relaunched its takeover of Mediobanca on Monday, increasing its offer with a cash component of €0.9 per share and lowering the minimum threshold for the validity of the takeover bid from 66.7% to 35% of shares with voting rights.

This was announced by the Sienese bank on Tuesday, the day after a meeting of its board of directors, putting the historic Milanese institution back at the centre of the financial chronicle after the failure to strengthen it by taking control of Banca Generali.

MPS had made a public exchange offer (Ops) in January, valid until 8 September, which Mediobanca had rejected in its initial version. The cash commitment of the MPS relaunch amounts to about €750 million, as part of an overall offer that with the shares comes to €13.5 billion.

"The financial objectives remain unchanged," reads a note from the bank, "aimed at maintaining strong capital strength and a dividend policy at the highest level in the sector, in the conviction that the commitment and the expected results will be appreciated by all stakeholders."

The board of MPS 'firmly believes that the increase in the consideration represents further concrete evidence of the industrial value of the transaction and of the bidder's attention to the market, with the aim of maximising take-up of the offer and accelerating value creation,' the MPS note concluded.

According to analysts, the success of the takeover bid is not at risk, but the market's response will be crucial. Mediobanca's two largest shareholders, Delfin and Caltagirone, with a combined 30% stake, simultaneously hold nearly 20% of MPS.

The two shareholders were decisive in the rejection of the acquisition of Banca Generali and were in favour of the takeover of the bank founded by Enrico Cuccia. It is believed that the institutional players holding other stakes of around 10% in Mediobanca will follow their lead.

The first signs of the stock market trend came from Milan, where on Tuesday, at the opening of the Piazza Affari, MPS and Mediobanca lost around 2% of their value.