Banks: Unicredit wants to take over Banco BPM for 10 billion euros

The major Italian bank Unicredit wants to take over its domestic competitor Banco BPM in a share swap worth around 10 billion euros. Unicredit, which is also interested in Frankfurt’s Commerzbank, announced in Milan that it would offer BPM shareholders 0.175 of its own shares per Banco BPM share. The exchange ratio corresponds to an offer value of around 6.67 euros per share, which would mean a premium of around 0.5 percent on the closing price of the BPM share on Friday.

With currently just over 1.5 billion Banco BPM shares, this would be around 265 million Unicredit shares. To do this, Unciredit would have to increase its capital by around 16 percent. Banco-BPM is currently valued at just over 10 billion euros; Unicredit comes to around 62 billion euros.

The major Italian bank recently secured just over a fifth of Commerzbank and is interested in taking over the German competitor. Commerzbank is currently worth around 18 billion euros on the stock exchange.