It was enough that the CEO of Banco Bpm, Giuseppe Castagna, which has in its track record the successful integration with Popolare di Verona, said that the merger between your bank and Ubi, although not on the agenda today, “makes sense” to turn it back on bank merger fever. Moreover, the Bank of Italy does not fail to recommend to credit institutions the opportunity to give life to a new phase of banking consolidation to strengthen the system from a capital point of view and enable it to withstand low profitability in times of low or negative interest rates and growing competition from Fintech.
In addition to Banco Bpm, either Ubi is Bper – not to mention the Monte dei Paschi, of Carige and Popular Bank of Bari – are at the top of the list in view of a new phase of banking combinations still to be defined. It's still Unicredit, who sooner or later will have to decide what to do when he grows up and whether or not to break the hesitation to attempt a merger-integration operation at a European level.
But the consolidation is not just about banks: it invests in its own right also the world of asset management, held back in the last year by the decline of the PIRs caused by the contradictory regulations of the previous government. Fineco has become contestable, Mediobanca he would like to strengthen himself – Del Vecchio permitting – beyond the evaporation of the Kairos operation, Arca is still there.
The fibrillation of the last days of the Stock Exchange on Banco Bpm and not only make it clear that the twists in the banking field and in the field of asset management are not for today but are now around the corner
