Warburg Pincus put forward a 50 million euros offer for Montepaschi’s Belgium based activities. The deal might be announced in the next few days, Bloomberg wrote adding that Rothschild is advising the bank for the deal.
Mps bank opened shop in Belgium in 1992, after having bought control of Banco di Roma in Belgium for 45 billion old Italian lire. Montepaschi’s Belgium activites have been put on sale as part of an agreement signed with the EU Commission so that the Italian Government might be allowed to inject 5.4 bnillion euros in the bank in the framework of the bank 8.3 billion euros recap. Also part of the agreement with the EU Commission is the sale of Montepaschi’s activities in France.
Warburg Pincus ha a specific focus on the financial services sector and in December 2017 announced the final closing of the fundraising of its Warburg Pincus Financial Sector Fund reaching 2,3 billion dollars, much more than the initial target of 1,6 billion dollars. This fund will co-invest with the Warburg Pincus XII Fund which raised 13,4 billion dollar at the end of 2015 (see here a previous post by BeBeez).
In Italy Warburg Pincus has been trying to enter the financial sectors for some times in the last few years. For example it entered a consortium with Atlas Merchant Capital, Baupost and Centerbridge presenting a bid to Atlante Fund to buy Banca Popolare di Vicenza and Veneto Banca in September 2016 but a deal was not reached and finally the two banks were bought by Intesa Sanpaolo (see here a previous post by BeBeez). Moreover Warburg Pincus name was said to be one of the private equity funds which set talks with Mps’s ceo Marco Morelli, who was trying to find private investors for the capital increase of the bank (see here a previous post by BeBeez).
