Private equity firm JC Flowers buys Monte Paschi's French division

PARIS, June 2 (Reuters) - JC Flowers has closed the purchase of the French arm of Italian bank Monte dei Paschi di Siena, the private equity firm said on Tuesday, adding it would refocus the business on wealth management services.

It did not disclose financial details of the deal.

The board of Monte dei Paschi had approved in June 2024 an exclusivity accord to sell the group's French operations to the private equity fund. 

Since then, the subsidiary, which had around €1 billion ($1.17 billion) in assets, has not undertaken new business pending the finalisation of the sale, Monte dei Paschi's annual report for 2025 showed. 

The transaction was agreed in June 2025 and was initially expected to be finalised by the end of last year after the necessary regulatory approvals. The closing was then pushed back to the first half of 2026.

Monte dei Paschi was bailed out by the Italian state in 2017 and reprivatised in 2023 to 2024. Under a restructuring plan agreed with European Union authorities to clear the state bailout, the Tuscan bank had committed to divesting its foreign activities.

JC Flowers said it would rename the unit and shift its focus to partnerships with independent financial advisers, targeting clients with niche product offerings such as mortgages, Lombard loans and other asset-backed credit and deposits.

"J.C. Flowers is proud to be one of the few firms that has the operational and sector-specific skills, backed by a proven track record, to undertake a broad transformational bank turnaround that will reposition the bank in the French market," said Ilinca Rosetti, operating partner at J.C. Flowers.

($1 = 0.8583 euros)

(Reporting by Sudip Kar-Gupta in Pari and Valentina Za in Milan;Editing by Bernadette Baum and Barbara Lewis)