US financial services oriented private equity JC Flowers reached an agreement with undisclosed terms for acquiring French Monte Paschi Banque from Italy’s Monte dei Paschi di Siena (press release).
After such carve-out, the buyer will rebrand the asset and sign partnerships with independent financial advisors for distributing niche products like mortgages, Lombard loans, assets-secured loans secured and deposits. The bank also aims to expand its range of bespoke products for its actual and providing them with specialist working capital solutions.
Michele Antognoli, the former ceo of BFF Spain, will lead the new firm with the head of sales and business development Garo Filibosoglu, a former director of Crédit Foncier et Communal d’Alsace et Lorraine (CFCAL).
JC Flowers will appoint Ilinca Rosetti, an operating partner of the fund, and Thierry Porté, a managing director and vice-president of the firm, as bank’s board of directors and Howard Davies as president
Davies heads Inigo and Qivalis nv (the firm that will issue the first European stablecoin, previous post by BeBeez and another previous post by BeBeez) and previously worked as the Deputy Governor of the Bank of England, chairman of NatWest Group and of UK Financial Services Authority.
Rosetti said: “JC Flowers is proud to be one of the few firms with the operational and sector-specific expertise with the solid track record for implementing a comprehensive transformation and restructuring and repositioning the bank in the French market. We look forward to working with the asset’s human resources for developing a new customer base and expand the product range”.
JC Flowers has assets under management of 5 billion US Dollars and offices in New York, London and Miami. The fund was born in 1998 and since then carried – on investments worth more than 18 billion US Dollars. The firm has 73 portfolio companies in 19 countries.
JC Flowers’ previous experience in establishing successful financial institutions through carve-outs includes HCOB in Germany, Fidea in Belgium and Romania’s First Bank (fka Pater Bank and since 2000 Pireus Bank Romania), an asset that Milan-listed Intesa Sanpaolo acquired in 2023 (see here a previous post by BeBeez). In 2000, Greek Piraeus Bank purchased First Bank, born in 1995, and in June 2018 sold a 76.1% of the firm to JC Flowers, a 19% to The European Bank of Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) and 4.9% to the management (press release). In April 2020, First Bank acquired Bank Leumi Romania from Bank Leumi Israel (press release).
In 2025, JC Flowers acquired Insurance broker Wefox Italy (see here a previous post by BeBeez).
