Giuseppe Castagna and Castagna and Pier Francesco Saviotti, CEOs of Bpm and Banco Popolare respectively, will be at Bankitalia today to update the national authority on the status of the merger project between the two institutions.
There are still problems to be resolved in the negotiation, therefore it is not yet possible to indicate precise times for the presentation of the operation. According to what is learned from financial sources, this is the state of the art represented yesterday by Castagna at the councils of the Milanese institute.
For this reason it is not yet possible to say whether this weekend will be the decisive one for the launch of the operation and at the moment there are no meetings of the decision-making bodies.
In the meantime, Bpm and Banco are also waiting for indications from the ECB, in particular on the time required for the disposal of non-performing loans, a fundamental factor to ensure that the new aggregate will not need capital increases, a cornerstone of Castagna's and Saviotti's strategy.
Castagna himself, on 8 February, in a conference call with analysts, underlined the importance of “understanding what times we will have as a very profitable combined entity to reduce the stock. So I'm not worried about the initial combined figure – he added – but the capacity that the combined will be able to generate from the point of view of revenues to satisfy part of the disposal needs of the asset classes”.
