Italy’s top bank Intesa launches unsolicited 30.6 billion euro bid for rival Monte dei Paschi
The merged entity will be eurozone’s second-biggest by market value, with a capitalisation of 126 billion euros
Published Mon, Jun 8, 2026 · 04:53 PM
[MILAN] Italy’s biggest banking group Intesa Sanpaolo on Monday (Jun 8) announced a 30.6 billion euro (S$45.5 billion) unsolicited cash-and-share bid to buy rival lender Monte dei Paschi di Siena (MPS), kicking off a fresh consolidation drive.
Having secured a fifth of the Italian banking market with the acquisition of mid-sized UBI back in 2020, Intesa kept out of a mergers and acquisitions burst that swept the industry in 2025, and said that antitrust limits prevented any further domestic expansion.
To address competition issues, Intesa said it had struck a deal with insurer Unipol, the main investor in Italian banking group BPER Banca, to sell a banking business comprising 635 MPS branches and the MPS brand, if its bid was successful.
Intesa and Unipol teamed up in a similar manner in the UBI deal.
Intesa said the combined entity would become the eurozone’s second-biggest banking group by market value after Spain’s Santander, with a capitalisation of 126 billion euros, and a net income goal of 16 billion euros in 2029, up from 2025’s combined profits of 13.6 billion euros.
MPS, which the state bailed out in 2017 and reprivatised in 2023 to 2024, emerged as a focal point for further Italian banking consolidation after buying Italian investment bank Mediobanca in 2025.
That deal made it the largest investor in insurer Generali, a coveted asset in Italian finance.
Intesa, whose business model is focused on wealth management and insurance, had attempted to buy Generali in 2017, but dropped the plan and grew its insurance business internally.
In 2025, Italy’s second-biggest bank UniCredit built a large stake in Generali.
Intesa said in a statement that its offer entailed a premium of 12.5 per cent versus the closing share price of MPS on Jun 5, for an overall outlay of 30.6 billion euros versus the MPS market value of 27.4 billion euros.
On Sunday, amid mounting expectations of an Intesa move, Banco BPM said its board had unanimously approved seeking to open talks with MPS, over a potential combination between the two lenders that would be a merger of equals. REUTERS
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