MPS CEO weights Banco BPM, Banca Generali bids to fend off Intesa, paper reports

ROME, Aug 19 (Reuters) - Banca Monte dei Paschi CEO Luigi Lovaglio is working on two potential share-swap offers for Banco BPM and Banca Generali as alternatives to Intesa Sanpaolo's takeover bid for the Tuscan lender, daily Il Sole 24 Ore reported on Wednesday citing banking sources.

Bailed out by the Italian state in 2017 and reprivatised in 2023-2024, MPS became the target in June of an unsolicited €36 billion ($42 billion) takeover bid by rival Intesa.

MPS's board has yet to be informed about the plan, although directors close to Lovaglio have been alerted to a possible imminent board meeting, the newspaper added.

MPS was not immediately available for comment.

Banca Generali and Banco BPM declined to comment.

Lovaglio has previously said he was studying defence options, noting that breaking up the commercial network — as Intesa plans to do by selling half of MPS branches — would destroy value.

He praised recent comments by Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who had expressed hope that MPS would not be broken up.

Any decision requires shareholder clearance under Italian takeover rules.

Banco BPM, Italy's fourth-largest bank, abandoned a plan to seek a merger with MPS after making no definitive progress since it first proposed discussing a tie-up in early June in an attempt to challenge Intesa's takeover bid.

That decision came after BPM's main shareholder, France's Credit Agricole, said it saw no value in such a deal.

($1 = 0.8624 euros)

(Writing by Andrea Mandalà, Francesca Piscioneri; Editing by Mirko Miorelli, Jacqueline Wong and Emelia Sithole-Matarise)