Italian bank Banco BPM said on Tuesday it would ask markets watchdog Consob to adopt measures to protect the bank’s stakeholders and its bid for Anima, after rival UniCredit launched its own offering on BPM.
Banco BPM had already complained that UniCredit’s global offer of 10 billion euros compromised its plan to buy asset manager Anima.
UniCredit’s move triggers a “rule of passivity” that prevents managers of a takeover target from doing anything that could thwart the bid without prior shareholder approval. This prevents Banco BPM from raising the price of its offer for Anima.
The board of directors of Banco BPM met on Tuesday to discuss its strategy in the face of UniCredit’s offer, which it has already described as “unusual”, saying that the premium close to zero did not reflect the BPM value.
Banco BPM said it was “inappropriate and out of context” for UniCredit to say it had offered a 15% premium on BPM’s share price before Anima’s offer. She argued that the bonus figure should, in any event, be calculated as 4% and not 15%.
UniCredit did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.
“It is not clear why the share price should not take into account the transactions that the bank has carried out based on the Anima offer,” said Giuseppe Castagna, chief executive of Banco BPM, in a statement. .
“Given numerous comments [du directeur général d’Unicredit Andrea Orcel]we believe that it is not beneficial for market transparency to set a price for the offer and, at the same time, suggest that it could be revised,” he added.
In presenting BPM’s bid, Orcel acknowledged that the price offered was close to the market price, but added that in other cases bidders had added a forward cash component.
Banco BPM said that, based on Monday’s closing price, UniCredit’s offer now came at a 14% discount to the market price.
