Italian lender Unicredit has agreed to sell Pioneer Investments to Europe’s largest asset manager, Amundi.
Unicredit has signed a binding agreement for the sale of Pioneer to Amundi but it excludes Pioneer’s operations in Poland.
The agreed price for Pioneer is a cash consideration of €3.545 billion. In addition, Unicredit will receive from Pioneer a €315 million pre-transaction extraordinary dividend.
However, in the run-up to the deal there was an incident when two senior members of Pioneer’s staff, Tanguy Le Saout and Ali Chabaane, resigned from the firm with immediate effect. It emerged that the duo were seeking to set up a rival firm and were suspended following an internal inquiry by Pioneer.
The Italian lender is selling a number of its assets as part of a plan unveiled by new chief executive Jean-Pierre Mustier. Alongside the Pioneer sale, Mustier is planning to jettison UniCredit’s Polish operations.
In a statement, Unicredit said that the Pioneer deal is another illustration of the group-wide strategic review, focusing on reinforcing and optimizing its capital position, improving profitability whilst maintaining flexibility to seize value creating opportunities.
The transaction will generate a consolidated net capital gain of € 2.2 billion for UniCredit in 2017, with an expected positive impact on the fully loaded Common Equity Tier 1 ratio of 78 basis points.
The boards of Amundi, Unicredit and Pioneer have all approved the deal and the transaction is expected to close in the first half of 2017.
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