BPER Banca's largest investor on Friday put forward former UniCredit executive Gianni Franco Papa as the candidate to take the top job at Italy's fourth-largest lender. BPER shareholders will meet to name a new board on April 19. The bank's top investor, insurer Unipol, is proposing replacing CEO Piero Montani, a turnaround expert that BPER brought in to oversee integration of businesses it bought in recent years.
(Reuters) -Italian financial group Unipol announced on Friday an offer for the 14.75% of UnipolSai it does not own, valuing the insurer at 7.64 billion euros ($8.2 billion) in a deal to simplify the group's structure. Shares in Unipol jumped as much as 23.5% after the long-awaited move, hitting their highest level since February 2012. Shares in Italy's second-largest insurer UnipolSai, whose board approved the offer, rose as much as 12.4%.
A large U.S. investment bank is considering building up a 10% stake in Italy's Banca Popolare di Sondrio, Il Sole 24 Ore newspaper reported on Thursday, without citing sources or naming the investor. The move would also pave the way for the entry of UniCredit in the group's shareholding, the newspaper said, without giving further details and adding that UniCredit declined to comment. Banca Popolare di Sondrio declined to comment on the report.