By Gianluca Semeraro
MILAN (Reuters) – Alberto Nagel on Thursday bid farewell to staff ahead of his expected resignation as chief executive of the Italian merchant bank Mediobanca, having lost the battle to fend off a takeover by Monte dei Paschi di Siena .
The state-backed Tuscan lender this month secured more than 62% in the Milanese merchant bank with a cash-and-share offer, and its stake is set to rise further with the reopening of the tender period, which ends on Monday.
“I will never be able to thank you enough for giving me the privilege of working alongside you,” Nagel wrote to his colleagues.
His letter was seen by Reuters while a board meeting was ongoing. In it, Mediobanca’s directors were expected to announce their plans to resign, effective October 28, allowing MPS to appoint a new board and chief executive, sources said.
Nagel has been in charge for 17 years. During this time, the 60-year-old has steered the bank — which was founded to finance Italy’s post-war reconstruction — away from its role as a lynchpin of Italian capitalism, with its web of cross-shareholdings at the centre.
He expanded wealth management operations to complement the bank’s traditional corporate and investment banking (CIB) and consumer finance businesses, making targeted acquisitions in Italy and abroad.
In his letter, Nagel used a Latin quotation to suggest that Mediobanca, even as prey, could end up having the upper hand over its predator, MPS, in terms of cultural influence, just as ancient Greece had over ancient Rome.
“Remember what (the ancient Roman poet) Horace wrote: Graecia capta ferum victorem cepit (Captive Greece conquered her savage victor)”, the outgoing CEO said.
INEVITABLE MERGER
The MPS takeover of its larger rival, launched in January and worth more than 16 billion euros ($19 billion), brings together the commercial banking operations of the Tuscan lender with the investment banking and wealth management businesses of Milan-based Mediobanca.
In recent years, Nagel came under fire from Mediobanca’s two leading shareholders — Italian tycoon Francesco Gaetano Caltagirone and Delfin, the holding company of late Ray-Ban eyewear billionaire Leonardo Del Vecchio.
They accused him of failing to grow the business adequately and of relying too heavily on the contribution from Italy’s leading insurer Generali, in which Mediobanca is the top shareholder with a 13% stake.
MPS — in which both Caltagirone and Delfin bought significant stakes last year — surprised investors early in 2025 by launching a bid for its bigger rival, part of a wave of consolidation in Italian banking.
The tender period ended on September 8 and reopened on September 16 running through Monday.
MPS has built a stake of 62.9% in Mediobanca and could exceed 80% shareholder take-up, making a merger of the two groups inevitable, Mediobanca General Manager Francesco Saverio Vinci said last week in a video message to staff.
MPS has said it would preserve the Mediobanca brand and run its operations separately by appointing a successor to Nagel whom it is currently in the process of selecting.
The acquisition by MPS has the support of Italy’s government, which aims to create a stronger rival to market leaders Intesa Sanpaolo and UniCredit as a series of deals redraws the country’s banking map.
($1 = 0.8447 euros)
(Reporting by Gianluca Semeraro, writing by Alvise Armellini, editing by Keith Weir and Giselda Vagnoni)
