MILAN (Reuters) – Insurer Generali and French bank BPCE have agreed to scrap the 50 million euro ($59 million) break-up fee that would be triggered if a proposed deal to merge their asset management businesses fails to go ahead, two sources told Reuters.
The plan to merge Generali Investment Holding and BPCE’s Natixis has been strongly opposed by two of Generali’s biggest shareholders, and has raised alarm in Rome, where the government is keen for Italians’ savings to be invested domestically.
Generali and BPCE are still in talks, but the chances of the deal going through appear extremely low, one of the sources said, with changes in Generali’s shareholder base strengthening the opposition to the transaction.
The ditching of the break-up fee would make it easier for the companies to walk away from the deal.
Generali CEO Philippe Donnet said in April he would not fight the government over the deal if Rome’s opposition persisted.
Italy has special powers to block deals where the assets are deemed strategic for the country.
One of the sources said BPCE was wary of the conditions Rome could impose after seeing the terms the government set on a now collapsed bid by UniCredit for rival Banco BPM.
Generali’s single biggest investor is Italian merchant bank Mediobanca, followed by the heirs of late Ray-Ban billionaire Leonardo Del Vecchio, through their Delfin holding company, and construction tycoon Francesco Gaetano Caltagirone.
Delfin and Caltagirone had both openly criticised the Natixis transaction.
These two investors have now secured effective control of Mediobanca, after the latter was taken over by Monte dei Paschi di Siena, a state-backed bank where Delfin and Caltagirone are the main two shareholders.
Delfin and Caltagirone, long-standing Mediobanca shareholders before they tendered their stakes under the Monte dei Paschi deal, had been at odds with Mediobanca CEO Alberto Nagel over the bank’s strategy.
Nagel resigned on Thursday as the entire Mediobanca board stepped down following the Monte dei Paschi takeover.
($1 = 0.8518 euros)
(Reporting by Valentina Za and Gianluca Semeraro in Milan; Mathieu Rosemain in Paris. Editing by Jane Merriman)
