“We have always said that we look at an entrepreneurial fabric that is particularly strong in Northern Italy. So it is obvious that theThe merger with Banca Ubi is an operation that certainly makes sense, but at the moment there is no initiative to take", so the CEO of Banco Bpm, Giuseppe Castagna, on the sidelines of the presentation conference of the 2019 Festival of the Future, to those who asked him to comment on a merger hypothesis with Ubi Banca.
The CEO of Banco Bpm then added that “since we did the merger, it has been an ambition to find a stable shareholder base, we have found some, some are new, we have strengthened the old ones a bit. But we must continue to give results even stand alone before thinking about getting involved in other operations. I'd like to have shareholders who can make a deal".
It was Morgan Stanley, on Friday 24 September, who published a report in which it highlighted that a possible merger between the two Lombard banks is strategically sensible, and above all that it is capable of determining better performance in terms of cost savings, for which the overlap of the two banks' activities would give room for a cut of up to 30% of expenses, as answered by Milano Finanza. To make the merger more robust, however, it would be necessary to increase new liquidity through a capital increase procedure of 1,5-2 billion euro.
Giuseppe Castagna added that Banco Bpm does not need a reduction in the number of non-performing loans: “We don't need extraordinary maneuvers” to reduce the weight of NPLs, already reduced by 21 billion in two years. “We have to reduce it by another 3-4 billion in three years”, commented the CEO.
Meanwhile, the Bpm Group is working on the presentation of the next business planexpected by the end of the year, while in the spring of 2020 the assembly will be called to appoint the new board of directors.
