General Electric, which is selling off most of its financial activities in the world in order to focus on the industrial ones, is studying the sale of its Italian branch GE Capital Interbanca, Il Sole 24 Ore wrote yesterday, relaunching an article published by Repubblica last April.
The US industrial giant is anyway said to be willing to keep control of its captive financial activities such as factoring versus Nuovo Pignone.
Repubblica wrote that the 2014 consolidated FY statement of GE Capital Interbanca shew a net loss of 15.8 mmillion euros, which was however quite less than the 2013’s net loss of about 119 millions, due to significant credits write-offs.
Moreover last year parent company GE Capital Global Financial Holding Inc injected 550 million euros in its Italian subsidiary in order to streghten its capital structure. The injection was made by cash for 350 millions and by conversion into equity of a 200 millions’ subordinated loan.
That effort allowed GE Capital Interbanca to reach supervisory capital ratios quite higher than the ones asked by Banca d’Italia both in terms of Common Equity Tier 1 ratio (27% versus 9.5%) and in terms of Total Capital ratio (27,6% vs 12%, including the capital conservation buffer of 2.5%). So whoever will buy control of GE Capital Interbanca will not have to invest new equity in the short term.
The deal might attract a number of international private equity firms with special focus on financial issues such as JC Flowers, Permira, Apollo Management or Apax Partners.
