By Giuseppe Fonte<\/p>\n
ROME (Reuters) -Italy has responded to European Union queries on the conditions it has imposed on UniCredit’s bid for Banco BPM by saying domestic savings are a matter of national security, sources familiar with the matter told Reuters.<\/p>\n
The European Commission had asked Rome for details about the terms that Giorgia Meloni’s government set in authorising UniCredit’s buyout offer for smaller lender BPM.<\/p>\n
The EU’s scrutiny of the way Italy uses its ‘golden power’ legislation to shield key assets could lead to an infringement procedure.<\/p>\n
To clear the deal, the Italian government told UniCredit to halt its activities in Russia, except for payments, by early 2026 and to refrain from lowering BPM’s loan-to-deposit ratio for five years.<\/p>\n
The EU, which promotes free movement of capital within the bloc, objected that it was unclear how an Italian lender buying a domestic rival could threaten the country’s security and therefore be subject to golden power conditions.<\/p>\n
Italy has responded that more than 60% of UniCredit’s capital is held by non-EU investors, the sources briefed on the contents of letters Rome exchanged with Brussels told Reuters.<\/p>\n
With a large public debt to refinance each year, Rome considers it important that the allocation of savings remains in domestic hands.<\/p>\n
Italy also argued that a government’s duty to defend a country’s financial security applies regardless of whether a merger deal potentially affecting national savings involves a foreign player or is fully domestic, the sources said.<\/p>\n
The European Commission was not immediately available to comment.<\/p>\n
Born to fend off unwelcome offers from outside the EU bloc, golden powers were expanded during the COVID-19 pandemic to shield strategic companies as their valuations crashed.<\/p>\n
Some member states, including Italy, have applied the legislation to the banking sector, even though EU rules hand supervisory powers over banks to the European Central Bank (ECB).<\/p>\n
UniCredit’s swoop on BPM, which derailed Rome’s plans to combine BPM with state-backed Monte dei Paschi di Siena, is part of a wave of takeover bids sweeping Italy.<\/p>\n
Italian Economy Minister Giancarlo Giorgetti said last month he would resign if he were overruled on UniCredit, after the government-imposed terms for the bid split the ruling coalition. Meloni has not recently spoken publicly on the issue.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Giuseppe Fonte, editing by Valentina Za and Gavin Jones)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Giuseppe Fonte ROME (Reuters) -Italy has responded to European Union queries on the conditions it has imposed…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":189860,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5174],"tags":[35517,77806,2000,299,5187,2557,1699,2440,2199,77805,18298,7748,23774],"class_list":{"0":"post-189859","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-eu","8":"tag-banco-bpm","9":"tag-domestic-savings","10":"tag-eu","11":"tag-europe","12":"tag-european","13":"tag-european-commission","14":"tag-european-union","15":"tag-giorgia-meloni","16":"tag-italy","17":"tag-national-savings","18":"tag-national-security","19":"tag-rome","20":"tag-unicredit"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114694933924006388","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189859","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=189859"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189859\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/189860"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=189859"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=189859"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=189859"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}