World's oldest bank fights takeover with €34bn counter-bids

After seven hours of deliberations on August 20, the board of Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena emerged with an extraordinary decision. Founded in 1472 and rescued by Italian taxpayers in 2017, Monte dei Paschi defended itself against Intesa Sanpaolo's €30.6 billion takeover bid by launching share-exchange offers for Banco BPM and Banca Generali, totaling roughly €34 billion, while distributing another €4 billion to its own shareholders, according to Project Syndicate.

The defensive manoeuvre has turned Italy's banking sector into a live case study for European financial integration. Writing in Project Syndicate, economist Lucrezia Reichlin argues the episode shows why EU policymakers should focus less on making governments surrender their influence over national banking systems and more on building a European financing channel.

From Bologna, the affair reads as a story about the productive plain's financial backbone. Emilia-Romagna's cooperatives and mid-sized manufacturers depend on a dense network of regional banks; a wave of consolidation concentrated in Milan's financial district would redraw how credit reaches the region's food and machinery exporters.