MILAN (Reuters) – The board of Monte dei Paschi di Siena will meet on Tuesday over a planned 2.5 billion euro ($2.4 billion) new share sale, a person close to the matter said, while it is still unclear whether the state-owned bank can proceed with the capital raising.
Monte dei Paschi (MPS) is striving to get a group of banks that have taken a preliminary commitment to guarantee the issue to sign an underwriting contract before launching the offer.
The banks, however, had requested that MPS first secured support for the sale from cornerstone investors given tough markets and the relative size of the capital raising, equivalent to more than 10 times MPS’ market value.
Sources had told Reuters on Friday that MPS would hold the board meeting by Wednesday at the latest as it sought to push through the transaction.
($1 = 1.0303 euros)
(Reporting by Valentina Za; editing by Agnieszka Flak)
