Bank M&A: No merger for ‘three-to-four years’, says UniCredit’s Mustier

UniCredit’s chief executive Jean Pierre Mustier has dismissed the possibility of a merger between UniCredit and another bank until late 2021 at the earliest.

Although committed to building a pan-European commercial bank, Mustier tells Euromoney there can be “no non-organic evolution of the group [for] three-to-four years” – despite rumours this year of talks between UniCredit and France’s Société Générale, whose investment bank Mustier used to run.

While UniCredit has made progress in its operating performance and non-performing loan disposals, its stock price is down by about a third this year, largely because of adverse political and sovereign-risk developments in Italy, its home country and biggest market.