Portugal 
Spain 
Greece 
Three funds for the Mps assets
13 September, Milano Finanza
Mps is currently evaluating different options to implement the reorganisation plan agreed with the European authorities. Among these, there is the possibility to transfer a significant portfolio of operating real estate assets valued one billion euro in total. The assessment started last spring with the support of the advisor Duff & Phelps Reag, registering the interest of Italian and international investors. According to Milano Finanza, the portfolio got the attention of Lonestar, Blackstone and Hines, which started evaluating the whole portfolio or some specific positions. The portfolio mainly concerns the branches that had been closed during the reorganisation plus other properties owned by the bank.
Moreover, it’s not to exclude that a sale & leaseback will be applied to the portfolio, as other banks have done in the past few years. The management is not rushing for closing the operation, and it will proceed with the negotiations only if the investors will appropriately evaluate the assets. After all, the current market situation demands caution and the Ceo Marco Morelli wants to avoid counter-productive deals, as demonstrated by the caution the bank showed in another operation recently started. At the beginning of the year, Mps put for sale the IT platform which got offers from Engineering, a subsidiary of the British Apax together with NB Renaissance and from Fondo Strategico Italiano, which could have involved Cedacri in the competition. Also in that case, Mps took its time to evaluate the economic proposals of the candidates.
Meanwhile, the de-risking of the assets is going on at a faster pace. While the maxi-securitisation for 26 billion euro as required by the ECB concluded in May, there are new projects currently developing. At the beginning of the summer, Mps launched the so-called Morgana project which initially came with two options: either the sale of the subsidiary Mps Leasing & Factoring or the transfer of the non-performing loans and unlikely-to-pay originated from leasing for a total value of two billion. The bank now seems to lean toward the second option, and several players have already manifested their interest.
Banca Ifis, Hoist, Cerberus, Mb Credit Solutions (group Mediobanca) and Kruk Among are some of the players interested in the Mps assets. The accounts also show the commitment to the de-risking process. On 30th June the bank forecasted the reduction of the npe ratio, namely the ratio between impaired credits and total credits, by the end of the reorganisation plan in 2021. With the completion of the maxi-securitisation, the exposure to bad loans has also reduced, going from 68.8% in March to 56%. Besides, the bank has been cutting costs throughout the first part of the year. As a result, the operational costs decreased by 8.9% with 1,154 million, 734 million of which are personnel costs, which declined by 8.2% on a yearly basis due to the redundancies. At the end of June, Mps had over 23 thousand employees and 1,597 branches, 150 less from December, half of those it had twelve years ago, after the incorporation of Antonveneta.
Source: Milano Finanza
Translator: Cristina Ambrosi