(Bloomberg) -- UniCredit SpA has until the middle of March to tweak its takeover bid for Banco BPM SpA, Chief Executive Officer Andrea Orcel told investors at a closed door meeting Wednesday.
Orcel, who made the remarks at an event hosted by Bank of America Corp., also said that most of the projected savings wouldn’t come from job reductions, according to people who attended the event. They asked not to be named because they weren’t authorized to talk about it.
A representative for UniCredit declined to comment.
UniCredit last week unveiled an unsolicited all-share bid for Banco BPM valuing the smaller rival at around €10 billion ($10.5 billion), based on Wednesday’s market close. That’s below the current market capitalization of €11 billion. Banco BPM has rebuffed the offer as too low and warned a deal could put 6,000 jobs at risk.
UniCredit has estimated that a takeover of Banco BPM would yield a reduction of €900 million in the combined entities’ annual costs.
In a meeting with analysts, UniCredit reaffirmed it plans to pay out half of its profits as dividends, Jefferies analysts including Marco Nicolai said in a note on Wednesday. That promise “is bulletproof, even in the first year of a potential consolidation,” the analysts said.
The UniCredit executives in that meeting also talked about their potential takeover bid for the German lender Commerzbank AG, signaling that clarity on that may not come before the end of next year, according to the Jefferies analysts. That’s because it may take six months from the time of federal elections in February for the country to get a new government.
UniCredit in September took a major stake in Commerzbank and said it’s considering an acquisition. Germany owns a 12% stake in the lender and the current government opposes the deal.
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