Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena announces that it has reached a binding agreement with Istituto Centrale delle Banche Popolari Italiane SpA (“ICBPI”), a leading company in the management of payment services at national and international level, for the sale of assets attributable to the merchant acquiring (the “Merchant Acquiring”) on the basis of an enterprise value of 520 million euros.
The transaction, in line with what was declared in the context of the 2016-2019 Business Plan presented to the market on 25 October 2016, also envisages that MPS and ICBPI, through its subsidiary CartaSì SpA, enter into a ten-year partnership for the development and the placement, through the distribution network of the BMPS Group, of payment products and services to support current and prospective customers of the BMPS Group.
The Tuscan bank manages the Merchant Acquiring business by distributing its products and services to around 100 customers through a network of around 2.100 branches in Italy. In 2016, Merchant Acquiring carried out transactions for a total volume of 17 billion euro, of which 60% carried out on points of sale for customers belonging to the large-scale distribution sector, while the remaining 40% with SME or small business operators.
The closing of the transaction is subject to the satisfaction of certain standard conditions precedent for transactions of this type, including the obligatory completion of the statutory and contractual trade union procedure, obtaining authorization from the Bank of Italy and the 'antitrust authority. MPS was assisted by Gatti Pavesi Bianchi for the legal aspects and by Lazard and KPMG for the financial aspects.
