By Valentina Za, Mathieu Rosemain and Giuseppe Fonte
MILAN/PARIS (Reuters) -European bank CEOs studying M&A moves at a time when some EU governments want a say in any reshaping of their banking industry should look at the dealmaking playbook of Credit Agricole.
The French group has become a key actor in Italy’s banking consolidation saga, playing a role in the fate of Banco BPM, which UniCredit had tried to swallow up in the face of Italian government opposition.
UniCredit upset Rome with its surprise swoop on Banco BPM in November, derailing a government project to promote an eventual tie-up between BPM and state-backed Monte dei Paschi di Siena.
In contrast, Credit Agricole’s patient, non-aggressive expansion strategy has, over almost two decades, turned Italy into the French group’s biggest market outside France, accounting for 15% of its reported profit in 2024.
A consistent approach based on a cooperative attitude towards Italian authorities has turned Credit Agricole (CA) into a reliable counterpart for successive administrations in Rome, government officials and bankers familiar with CA’s strategy, as well as two sources within the company, told Reuters.
“To be very clear: the government doesn’t look at bankers’ nationality but at their ability to … gather savings, protect them and lend them out,” Italian Economy Minister Giancarlo Giorgetti said earlier in July.
Since the end of 2020, CA’s retail business in Italy has added some 15 billion euros in customer loans. The domestic franchise of market leader Intesa Sanpaolo has shrunk its loan book by twice that amount and UniCredit by some 22 billion euros, the banks’ financial statements showed.
UniCredit, Italy’s second biggest bank, last week dropped its Banco BPM bid, blaming Rome’s intervention for thwarting the project after government-imposed terms ensnared it in a legal battle, fuelling concerns among UniCredit’s directors about a strategy that had antagonised the government.
CA also posed a hurdle, a person directly involved in the process said, adding that UniCredit failed to agree terms under which the French bank would tender its 19.8% BPM holding to acquire a stake in UniCredit.
Credit Agricole SA, the listed entity of the mutual banking group, this month sought European Central Bank authorisation to cross the 20% ownership threshold in Banco BPM, saying it would go just above that level and ruling out a full takeover.
CA, also known as “la banque verte” because of its historic ties to farming, partners with BPM on insurance and consumer finance. It became an investor in April 2022 soon after another unsuccessful takeover attempt by UniCredit.
