UniCredit has increased its holding in Italian insurer Generali to 8.72%, Generali chairman Andrea Sironi told shareholders at the company’s annual general meeting, reported Reuters.
The role and ownership of Generali has drawn renewed attention as consolidation continues across the country’s financial sector.
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Before last year’s Generali annual meeting, UniCredit had assembled a 6.7% position and backed a dissenting shareholder.
At that stage, the bank described the holding as an investment.
It later said it intended to scale back the position, so the larger figure announced at the meeting was unexpected.
In a statement, UniCredit again described the Generali holding as “a financial investment”.
“It comes at an attractive financial return,” the bank said.
Last June, chief executive Andrea Orcel told a finance conference that UniCredit would steadily cut its Generali position and eventually dispose of it.
Separately, Generali’s leading shareholder, merchant bank Mediobanca, has been taken over by Monte dei Paschi di Siena (MPS), with the consequences for the insurer still uncertain.
MPS chief executive Luigi Lovaglio has said that the Generali stake is a “nice to have” for the combined MPS-Mediobanca group.
According to fresh reports, Lovaglio is considering selling a €7.4bn ($8.64bn) stake in Generali to fund the acquisition of Banco BPM, the news agency added, citing the Financial Times.
In October, Orcel told analysts that UniCredit’s net position in Generali had fallen below 5%, while net exposure was under 2% once hedging contracts were included.
He said then that the stake was neither strategic nor “tactically important”.
In November, speaking to a parliamentary committee in Rome, Orcel repeated that the net stake had been reduced to around 2% and that UniCredit was retaining it while “observing the situation”.
A person familiar with the matter said Orcel was referring to a reduction in UniCredit’s net financial exposure, which can be achieved through derivatives that protect against a possible fall in Generali’s share price.
Last year, UniCredit completed the internalisation of its life bancassurance business in Italy, taking full control of its joint ventures (JVs) with CNP Assurances and Allianz.
After the transaction, the JVs were renamed. CNP UniCredit Vita is now operating as UniCredit Life Insurance, while UniCredit Allianz Vita has become UniCredit Vita Assicurazioni.
