Banks on the rise amid Santander’s financial results and the MPS saga; Risiko enters its climax

(Il Sole 24 Ore Radiocor) - Intesa-Unipol on MPS, or Banca Monte Paschi Siena with Banco Bpm and the French bank Agricole, whether they hold a stake or not. And then there is the dialogue between Siena and Trieste, the fate of the 13% stake in Generali , the uncertain future of Mediobanca , the division involving half of Monte dei Paschi’s branches and Unicredit, which has long been on the sidelines in Italia. The never-ending jigsaw puzzle of the banking sector – which in recent hours has seen a proliferation of more or less intriguing theories – will really come to the fore in the coming hours with the quarterly results from Piazza Gae Aulenti. Meanwhile, the rally in share prices on the Milan Stock Exchange shows no sign of stopping: Unipol (up 29% since the start of June), Rocca Salimbeni up around +30% in less than two months, whilst UniCredit, Ca’ de Sass, Generali and Bper Banca are all up, with only Piazza Meda showing a more cautious performance, remaining flat (+19% since June).

On 23 July, as mentioned, the key period begins: rather than focusing on the results of Orcel’s bank – which have been growing steadily quarter on quarter – market participants are expecting news of any potential moves in Italia following the successful takeover of Germany’s Commerzbank. Time is also running out for Luigi Lovaglio and Giuseppe Castagna, who now have a window of just a few weeks to present a possible merger plan between BPM and Monte before Intesa Sanpaolo’s OPAS effectively rules out any alternative scenario.

In the meantime, the French firm Agricole remains tight-lipped, despite holding a stake of nearly 30 per cent in BPM and the fact that any plans would necessarily have to go through them (there had already been talk last year of a hypothetical merger between BPM and Agricole Italia, though nothing ever came of it).

In the meantime, it fell to Santander – Europe’s largest bank by market capitalisation – to provide a preview of the quarterly results this morning; the bank closed the first half of the year with revenue up 6% to 30.8 billion and an operating profit of 7.328 billion (+15%). The reaction on the Madrid Stock Exchange was positive (+2.1%), a sign that Eurozone banks, despite geopolitical tensions and doubts over ECB interest rates, continue to rack up profits, having already shored up their balance sheets.