Investors aiming at taking control of Italy’s Istituto Centrale delle Banche Popolari (Icbpi)  will be shortly required to put forward their bind offers for the bank specialised in payment services owned by Italian domestic cooperative banks.
Last week Icbpi published its 2014 financial statements (see here the press release) and as far as BeBeez is concerned, advsors Mediobanca end Equity will soon ask potential investors to put their offers on the desk without a previous dataroom (see here a pervious post by BeBeez).
“We need to be content with the financial statements only. It’s not an easy deal but it is certainly quite interesting”, a representative of one of private equity funds in the race told BeBeez.
Many private equity funds are said to be interested to the deal that values Icbpi more than 2 billion euros (till a maximum of 2.4 billions), as the bank closed year 2014 with 928 million euros of consolidated equity up from 849.5 millions in 2013 (download here 2013 consolidated financial statements), an ebitda (interest margin) of 69.9 millions (down 7.7 millions due to losses in portfolio assets) and a net profit up by 31.7% to 96.3 millions (from 73.2 millions in 2013, when profits were dumped by a one-off 8.5% new tax that hit all financial institutions in Italy at the end of year 2013).
Potential bidders are: a consortium made by Advent and Bain Capital which is said to be joined by Italy’s Clessidra private equity firm; fondo Clessidra; paneuropean operator Permira allied with CVC Capital Partners; BC Partners together with Cinven; and Lone Star, racing all by itself. But Apax Partners and Hellman&Friedman have been said to be interested in the deal.
