UniCredit chief executive Andrea Orcel declared on 12 November 2025 that the bank had closed the chapter on its attempted acquisition of Banco BPM, drawing a formal line under a bid that was abandoned in July 2025 after the Italian government intervened to set conditions that UniCredit found unacceptable. The statement confirms that UniCredit will not revive the domestic Italian consolidation deal.
GOLDEN POWER CONDITIONS
Italy exercised its authority to scrutinise the proposed transaction and set conditions on it. The conditions imposed by Rome under its 'golden power' rules were made public and included exiting Russia and maintaining lending and the loan-to-deposit ratio in Italy; Orcel and the UniCredit board judged them unworkable.
Orcel, speaking at Bloomberg's Future of Finance event in Milan, described UniCredit's appeal to Italy's Council of State over the golden power decree as the board's duty to obtain legal clarity, adding that the bank could not accept the government's view that it represented a national security threat — without seeking an open confrontation with Rome.