MILAN (Reuters) -Italy’s biggest bank Intesa Sanpaolo should stay away from the merger and acquisition frenzy gripping the sector and focus on delivering results for shareholders, Chief Executive Carlo Messina said on Tuesday.
A wave of hostile banking bids has swept Italy’s financial sector, but Intesa has avoided them as a result of its 2020 deal to buy UBI, the healthiest second-tier bank, which means it controls a fifth of the market and faces antitrust limits.
Speaking to analysts after Intesa beat expectations with a 13.6% rise in first-quarter net profit on Tuesday, Messina said what he saw as “a big mess” in Italian banking M&A had got worse in recent weeks.
“I’m really confirmed in my opinion that it is absolutely much better to remain focused on delivering results for shareholders,” he said.
Messina’s comments are in line with those he made in February when he said Intesa would stay out of the fray and it would rather take advantage of the situation to poach talent from rivals.
On Tuesday, he said the bank hired 151 private bankers from rivals during the first quarter, adding 1.5 billion euros in net wealth from clients the bankers have taken with them.
Messina also said Intesa had lent less than it would normally have in the first quarter because the takeover activity had prompted some rivals to increase lending, depressing loan rates.
“A lot of players that are involved in M&A decided to increase the size of their balance sheet,” he said, adding that made sense if you were seeking positive results in an M&A deal, but that Intesa “decided not to follow the mispricing in the market”.
(Reporting by Valentina Za, editing by Gianluca Semeraro and Barbara Lewis)
