\n<\/p>\n
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Simply sign up to the European banks myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox.<\/span><\/p>\n An Italian court has confirmed that lender UniCredit must comply with a government demand to exit from Russia if it wishes to complete the takeover of rival Banco BPM, in a blow to chief executive Andrea Orcel.<\/p>\n The request by Giorgia Meloni\u2019s government is \u201ctotally legitimate\u201d and \u201cthere can be no doubt about the fact it is proper\u201d, the court ruled. <\/p>\n But it partially upheld an appeal by UniCredit on other measures demanded by Rome as conditions of the takeover.<\/p>\n In the landmark ruling, published on Saturday, government prescriptions on BPM\u2019s post-merger loan-to-deposit ratio and the maintenance of the two lenders\u2019 project finance portfolios in Italy were struck down. <\/p>\n It is the first time the administrative court has ruled against any requirements imposed by the government on a strategic takeover deal, and the judges\u2019 decision cancels the existing text of the government\u2019s decree altogether. <\/p>\n Orcel had previously warned that the deal could fall apart if the government did not relax its requirements. <\/p>\n It was not immediately clear whether either side in the case would appeal further, or whether the government would redraft its decree to take into account the judges\u2019 decision.<\/p>\n That leaves the deal in limbo. The BPM offer period, which has already been extended once due to the court case, ends on July 23. If the government does not rewrite its decree, UniCredit could ask for the deadline to be extended, or one of the parties could appeal against the court\u2019s decision; the deadline could also be suspended by the regulator. <\/p>\n BPM said in a statement it was pleased with the outcome of the appeal and called on UniCredit to \u201cclarify its intentions\u201d on the takeover. <\/p>\n UniCredit declined to comment on the decision. UniCredit\u2019s board is due to meet in the coming days, according to people familiar with the matter. <\/p>\n UniCredit is Italy\u2019s second-largest lender. It launched concurrent takeover bids for BPM and Germany\u2019s Commerzbank last year. <\/p>\n It has significantly reduced its exposure to Russia since the country\u2019s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 but remains one of two European lenders to operate a local subsidiary.<\/p>\n Orcel has so far refused to exit the country altogether to avoid incurring a balance sheet hit. The exit would have to be authorised by Russian authorities.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Stay informed with free updates Simply sign up to the European banks myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox. An Italian court has confirmed that lender UniCredit must comply with a government demand to exit from Russia if it wishes to complete the takeover of rival Banco BPM, in a blow to chief executive<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10623,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[3669,2947,3107,160,3668,2596,523,3670,3667],"class_list":{"0":"post-10622","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-bpm","9":"tag-complete","10":"tag-confirms","11":"tag-court","12":"tag-exit","13":"tag-italian","14":"tag-russia","15":"tag-takeover","16":"tag-unicredit"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10622","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10622"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10622\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/10623"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10622"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10622"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10622"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}