By Valentina Za and Giuseppe Fonte
MILAN (Reuters) -Monte dei Paschi di Siena is expected to name JPMorgan banker Vittorio Grilli as the new Mediobanca chair, two people close to the matter have said, as it finalises its picks for the top jobs at the merchant bank it acquired in September.
Monte dei Paschi (MPS), of which the state still owns about 6%, last month concluded a 16 billion euro ($19 billion) stock-and-cash offer for Mediobanca, securing 86.3% of its share capital and prompting the Mediobanca board to resign.
MPS must select a new chief executive and chairman for Mediobanca by October 3 before a shareholder vote to appoint a new board on October 28.
The sources said Grilli, a former economy minister, looked set to take the chair role. Grilli is currently Italy chairman at JPMorgan and head of the U.S. bank’s corporate and investment banking for Europe, Middle East and Africa.
JPMorgan, which declined to comment, has advised MPS on the Mediobanca deal, together with Swiss bank UBS.
UBS Italy head Riccardo Mulone made the shortlist for the role of chief executive, one of the two sources and a third person said. But they said Alessandro Melzi d’Eril, CEO of fund manager Anima Holding, appeared to be favourite for the job. Anima has been recently bought by Banco BPM.
Mediobanca’s operations comprise wealth management, corporate and investment banking and consumer finance – its only retail business where it partners with MPS, which is a traditional commercial bank.
In hiring the new Mediobanca heads, MPS has been seeking investment banking and wealth management skills, looking for names that could please two core shareholders, Italy’s billionaire Del Vecchio and Caltagirone families, while also minimising the risk of a flight of Mediobanca bankers.
However, the compensation package, including ways to offset the deferred pay the managers would leave behind by changing jobs, has complicated the recruiting process, the sources said.
MPS is expected to finalise the proposals at a board meeting on Thursday or Friday.
On Tuesday, Mediobanca’s top ranks travelled to Siena to meet MPS’ senior executives and another meeting is scheduled in Milan next week as the banks, which have different business models, start tackling the integration process.
Under the leadership of Luigi Lovaglio, who arrived in Siena in 2022, MPS has finally turned a corner after a decade-long crisis that forced the state to bail it out in 2017.
After returning to profit in 2023 and paying its first dividend in 13 years, MPS launched its bid for Mediobanca in January, joining the consolidation wave sweeping Italian banking.
($1 = 0.8526 euros)
(Reporting by Valentina Za and Giuseppe Fonte; Editing by Kevin Liffey and Keith Weir)
