PARIS, April 8 (Reuters) – Banco BPM jumped on the stock market on Friday morning after the announcement of Crédit Agricole SA’s entry into its capital, which revived speculation on a possible takeover.
The action of the third bank of the peninsula gained 14.15% to 3.12 euros, the best performance of the European Stoxx 600 index, which rose 1.33%.
In Paris, Crédit Agricole SA is up 1.71%, despite the lowering of Jefferies’ recommendation to “hold” against “buy”, motivated by the group’s exposure to the fallout from the conflict in Ukraine and sanctions against Russia.
The French bank announced Thursday evening to hold 9.18% of the capital of Banco BPM, saying it wanted to strengthen its cooperation with the latter.
CASA, whose Italy is the second largest market and which bought another bank there last year, Creval, for 855 million euros, specified that it had not requested authorization from the supervisory authorities to cross the threshold of 10% stake in Banco BPM. But several analysts already believe that it should not stop there.
Banco BPM, well established in Lombardy, one of the richest regions of Italy, has long sought to approach another bank and in 2020 had discussions with Crédit Agricole which were unsuccessful.
The integration of Banco BPM by CASA “would make sense from an industrial point of view”, believe analysts from Intesa Sanpaolo, even if he considers that a rapid evolution of the file is unlikely.
Those of JPMorgan believe that the probability of a takeover of Banco BPM “has increased significantly”, explaining that “if Crédit Agricole has not requested authorization from the ECB to cross the 10% threshold and if the bank is still occupied by the integration of Creval, we cannot exclude other opportunistic initiatives”.
They add that the operation would remain financially attractive with a premium of up to 50% but note that the current context is not very favorable due to the risks linked to Russia and the deterioration of the macroeconomic context.
Prior to Friday’s rise, Banco BPM’s stock market value of 4.15 billion euros was down more than 27% from its February peak.
(Written by Marc Angrand, with Federica Urso in Milan, edited by Matthieu Protard)