Three binding offers arrived yesterday on the desk of Unicredit bank’s ceo Federico Ghizzoni for a 50pct stake in the leading asset management firm Pioneer Investments, The latter is 100pct controlled by Unicredit and at the end of last March had 179 billion euros of assets under management. Pioneer is valued at least 2 billion euros.
Any decision will be taken next Autumn. However it is possibile that Unicredit’s board enters in exclusive talks with one of the bidders after having discussed the matter in its next meeting on August 5th.
The deal was examined by several buyout firms but it seems that binding offers have been provided by CVC Capital Partners and Advent International. Moreover a binding offer has been provided by Spanish Banco Santander. Finally as far as BeBeez is concerned, Italian private equity operator Clessidra has considered the hypotesis of a partnership between Anima sgr and Pioneer as it already made with the asset management of Monte dei Paschi di Siena and Banca Popolare di Milano (see a previous post of BeBeez).
A couple of weeks ago Ghizzoni told the press that “we do not want to sell Pioneer. We are always ready to evaluate instead accelerating growth hypothesis also thanks to partnerships. Unicredit will remain at the center of Pioneer’s goverance”.
