Mediobanca takeover: Caltagirone, Milleri and Lovaglio under investigation

On the afternoon of 27 November, Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena announced that it had received a search warrant from the Milan Public Prosecutor's Office. In this context, underlines the press release, a notice of indictment was served on Dr Luigi Lovaglio in his capacity as Chief Executive Officer; the offence hypotheses indicated in the document refer to obstruction of supervisory functions and market manipulation. "The Bank is confident that it will be able to provide all the elements to clarify the correctness of its actions and expresses full confidence in the competent Authorities, to which it confirms full cooperation," the statement underlines.

The agreement on which investigators are focusing has as its object the takeover of Mediobanca by the Siena-based institution. According to the investigations, this agreement was concealed from Consob, the European Central Bank and Ivass. Not only. The pact would have involved coordinating not only the purchases in 2024 of a quota of Mps shares sold at the end of 2024 by the Ministry of the Treasury, then the largest shareholder in the Sienese bank, but also the purchases of shares in Mediobanca, to the point of violating the regulatory obligation to launch a mandatory takeover bid on the institution then led by Alberto Nagel once the 25% stake in Piazzetta Cuccia had been jointly reached and exceeded.

The Milan Public Prosecutor's Office thus tightens its grip on the banking risiko after ten months of investigation.

The investigation started from a lawsuit filed at the beginning of 2025 by Mediobanca against certain press articles deemed defamatory by Piazzetta Cuccia. From here, the work of the Milanese magistrates has broadened in recent months - with the banking risiko in the background - passing from the modalities with which the last accelerated placement of part of Rocca Salimbeni's capital was carried out (a procedure managed in November 2024 by Akros on behalf of the Mef), to the same takeover of Piazzetta Cuccia, which ended last September.

Following the disclosure of the ongoing investigation, Mps recorded a significant drop in the stock market, with the share price preroding over 5% during the session, with a low of EUR 8.123. The Mediobanca also fell more than 3%.