Monte dei Paschi di Siena (MPS) CEO Luigi Lovaglio is considering selling the 7.4 billion euro, 13% stake in insurance group Generali that MPS acquired last year through its takeover of Mediobanca, to help fund a fresh push for Banco BPM, according to five sources cited by the FT. The move would revive the Italian government's earlier ambition to combine MPS and BPM into a national banking champion, a plan disrupted last year when UniCredit launched a takeover bid for BPM that was eventually blocked by Rome. After publication, MPS denied it was examining the Generali stake sale, saying it was "entirely focused" on integrating Mediobanca.
Lovaglio was reinstated as CEO less than a month after MPS's outgoing board ousted him over strategy disagreements — including the future of the Generali stake. The Italian government, which retains a small stake in MPS, abstained from the vote, signalling it did not oppose his return. Giorgia Meloni's government treats Generali as a "national strategic asset" — the insurer is one of Italy's biggest buyers of sovereign debt — and last year opposed Generali's asset-management JV with France's Natixis out of concern that French governance would undermine Generali's role in Italian bonds.
Intesa Sanpaolo and UniCredit are seen as preferred buyers for the Generali stake, but both are problematic: UniCredit is absorbed in a battle for Commerzbank in Germany, and Intesa is already Italy's biggest bank and largest life insurer (antitrust risk). Intesa CEO has also ruled out taking "minority" stakes. An alternative is distributing the stake to MPS shareholders as a special dividend. Meanwhile UniCredit's Andrea Orcel has built a near-9% stake in Generali on his own. Source: Financial Times, 24 April 2026, Silvia Sciorilli Borrelli.