BPER Banca Is Open to Talks With Carige's Owner About Acquisition

   By Cristina Roca

BPER Banca SpA is willing to hold talks with Banca Carige SpA's owner about taking over the troubled lender, it said late on Tuesday.

The Italian bank last week submitted a nonbinding offer to buy Carige, which was bailed out by Italy's deposit-guarantee fund, FITD, in 2019. The FITD responded on Thursday that the size of the recapitalization of Carige included in the offer terms didn't comply with its statutory provisions, but signaled it was open to negotiating.

BPER said Tuesday that it reiterated to the FITD "its willingness to provide the clarification requested and carry out the deepdive analysis deemed necessary, as well as to jointly verify the assumptions underlying the offer." It called again for an exclusivity period to be agreed on for the negotiations.

On Dec. 14, BPER offered to buy 88.3% of Carige held by the FITD and Cassa Centrale Banca for 1 euro ($1.13). Per the terms of the offer, Carige would first get a EUR1 billion capital injection from the FITD to help cover integration costs and clean up its loan books. BPER said its offer would expire if it wasn't granted an exclusivity period by Dec. 20.

Write to Cristina Roca at cristina.roca@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

December 22, 2021 03:19 ET (08:19 GMT)

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