ACCORDING to a news report, Italy’s best-known investment bank Mediobanca is expected to gradually exit all of its strategic holdings, including a 4.6% stake in tyre maker Pirelli except life insurer Generali.
The Milan-based bank, which owns stakes in some Italy’s biggest companies, will present a new business plan to focus on its banking business and break with years of meddling in Italy’s top corporate developments, it has been reported. Shrinking returns amid a deep economic crisis at home have prompted the bank to rethink its corporate investment strategy. The bank’s 2013-2016 plan will call for retrenching its core investment banking operations and putting greater focus on its retail bank, a source of stable liquidity, as well as on its high-margin consumer finance division.
Apart from Pirelli, Mediobanca’s biggest financial holdings are a 13.2% stake in Europe’s biggest life insurer Generali, about 13.7% in Italian publisher RCS Mediagroup and 11.6% of Telco, the holding company which controls Telecom Italia.