Italy’s biggest banking group Intesa Sanpaolo has announced a €30.6 billion unsolicited cash-and-share bid to acquire rival lender Monte dei Paschi di Siena, kicking off a fresh consolidation drive in Italian banking. According to Reuters, the offer values each MPS share at €10.09, a 12.5% premium to Friday’s closing price, with Intesa offering 16 newly issued shares for every 10 MPS shares plus €1 cash per MPS share. The transaction is expected to close by December 2026 and would mark the largest banking deal in Italian history.
Should the takeover bid prove successful, the merged entity would become the eurozone’s second-largest banking group by market value, trailing only Spain’s Santander, creating a combined institution with approximately €1.7 trillion in assets, serving over 27 million clients, and operating roughly 3,000 branches nationwide. To address competition issues stemming from its 2020 UBI acquisition, Intesa struck a deal with insurer Unipol — the main investor in BPER Banca — to sell a banking business comprising 635 MPS branches and the MPS brand if its bid succeeds. Unipol said it would pay up to €3.5 billion for those assets, with the divested business to operate under the name Banca Monte dei Paschi.
The bid arrives a day after rival Banco BPM said its board had unanimously approved seeking to open merger talks with MPS, positioning the two lenders as a merger of equals. Under Italian takeover rules, Intesa’s formal offer now prevents MPS from negotiating with Banco BPM without shareholder approval, effectively freezing out the competing approach for the duration of the offer period. MPS, which the Italian state bailed out in 2017 and reprivatised in 2023 and 2024, has been a target of domestic bank mergers since becoming the main investor in insurer Generali last year — a coveted asset in Italian finance.
By 2029, the combined group’s net income would exceed €16 billion, compared with €11.5 billion in Intesa’s standalone business plan. Intesa said an extraordinary shareholders’ meeting is expected to be called on September 10 to vote on a €5.7 billion capital increase to back the transaction.
