At four in the afternoon the eagerly awaited and painful meeting of Banca Popolare di Milano (Bpm) finally said yes to the wedding with Banco Popolare from which the third Italian banking pole will be born, which will be called Banco BPM. In the Bpm house, the consents to the merger were 7.314 out of 10.198 voters: the vote of the employee members, organized by the internal unions, was decisive, which counterbalanced the announced dissent of the retired members (2.731 no). Together with the merger with the Veronese, the Bpm assembly approved the transformation into a joint stock company which definitively archives the per capita vote (one person, one vote) as required by the reform of cooperative banks desired by the Renzi government.
The consent to the merger expressed by Banco Popolare was even plebiscitary, which approved the wedding and transformation into a joint-stock company with 99,5% of the votes.
The merger between Bpm and Banco Popolare is the first banking marriage of the year in Europe and is the first aggregation after the Italian reform of cooperative banks and is destined to change the geography of the Italian banking system by creating a giant behind Intesa Sanpaolo and Unicredit but strongly linked to a territory (such as that of Lombardy and the North East) which is very prosperous and capable of giving satisfaction to the new bank, which will be chaired by Fratta Pasini and led by CEO Giuseppe Castagna who, not by chance, commented: “With the approval of the merger we are taking a dip into the future”.
The merger, which will become operational from 2017 January 1, will be governed by the exchange ratios already established, namely: 1 Banco BPM share for every Banco Popolare share, 6,386 Banco BPM share for every XNUMX BPM shares.
It is useless to deny that the approval of the merger has, in addition to an economic and financial effect, also a significant political value. While awaiting the referendum on the constitutional reform of 4 December, the international markets and chancelleries wanted to understand whether Renzi's reforms are holding up and are going ahead or not and the go-ahead for the third banking hub is the response that is also very welcome by the Government.
