A pioneering deal

14 May 2010 By Nicholas Paisner

UniCredit and Intesa are considering offloading their fund management divisions. A sale would help strengthen their balance sheets. But having sold shares earlier this year, UniCredit is in a stronger negotiating position than its capitalhungry rival.

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UniCredit, the Italian bank, said on May 11 it had appointed Bank of America Merrill Lynch to explore all strategic options for Pioneer Investments, its asset management business.

Pioneer Investments had assets of 185 billion euros at the end of 2009. It made pretax profit of 287 million euros during the year. Italian investors account for 54 percent of the unit's assets.

UniCredit said it believed that Pioneer needed "to increase its scale as it operates in multiple countries and not only in one single market." It further commented that "organic growth may not be enough to achieve the right scale within an acceptable timeframe."

Intesa Sanpaolo said on May 11 that it was in discussion with U.S. privateequity fund Hellman & Friedman about the purchase of a minority stake in Banca Fideuram on occasion of its planned listing.

Intesa said in February 2010 that it had started work on the initial public offering of Banca Fideuram. It will sell a majority stake in the wealth management business. The bank said the move was one of a number of actions aimed at strengthening its capital ratios by 100 basis points in the short term.

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