Intesa CEO upbeat on antitrust ruling on MPS bid after strong quarter

By Valentina Za

MILAN, Nov 3 (Reuters) - Intesa Sanpaolo is confident about the antitrust decision it faces over its bid for Monte dei Paschi di Siena, Chief Executive Carlo Messina said, as Italy's biggest bank raised its 2026 profit outlook.

Talking to analysts after Intesa posted better-than-forecast quarterly earnings on Tuesday, Messina played down concerns about the antitrust verdict which is expected by the end of the month.

"The final result should be, from an economic point of view, in line with what we have considered in the proposal to the market," he said.

After sitting on the fence for 18 months while bids and counter-bids among Italian banks multiplied, Intesa jumped into the fray in June with a €34 billion ($38 billion) cash-and-share offer for MPS.

Having persuaded MPS's shareholders to reject the Tuscan bank's defence strategy with a sweetener and a warning it would walk away, Intesa is due to launch its bid in the week of November 23 once it has secured approval, due early next week, from Italy's markets watchdog.

Before becoming a target for Intesa, MPS managed to acquire bigger peer Mediobanca, becoming the main shareholder in insurer Generali.

Intesa does not expect to have to shed other MPS branches on top of those it has already agreed to sell to insurer Unipol for antitrust reasons, Messina said, adding that it would need, in that case, to find a different buyer.

UniCredit, the number two Italian bank, has already said it may be interested.

"We are in a position to have total trust in the antitrust institution," Messina said.

Intesa, which owns an insurance business, could face "behavioural" remedies in relation to the Generali stake, the competition authority's chief has already said.

"CRAZY ATTITUDE" 

Intesa guided for a full-year net profit "well" above €10 billion ($11 billion), having earlier forecast a 2026 result simply above that figure.

It quantified at €900 million for the current year the tax hit from Italy's new budget law.

Italy plans to further hike taxes on banks under its 2027 budget, a decision which Messina billed as a "crazy attitude in the budget law to reduce (lenders') net income". 

However, with interest rates rising, Intesa forecast a "significant" increase in income derived from the gap between lending and deposit rates in 2027. 

Net profit in the July-September period was €2.65 billion, above a €2.50 billion LSEG average analyst forecast.

Revenue matched expectations at €7 billion, but Intesa kept costs flat quarter-on-quarter and cut them by 2.5% from a year before.

With the bulk of its business in Italy, where an ageing and fast-shrinking population hinders economic growth, Intesa has been targeting cost savings through technology but also domestic acquisitions such as the MPS deal.

($1 = 0.8937 euros)

(Reporting by Valentina Za, editing by Alvise Armellini and Keith Weir)