From the depths of a crisis, the long-awaited wave of European bank M&A seems to have finally emerged.
Intesa Sanpaolo’s €5 billion deal for Italian rival UBI Banca, announced in February, is Europe’s biggest bank acquisition in a decade. CaixaBank’s merger with Bankia, which is almost as large, came only a few months later. Other deals are in the works.
It is better late than never.
For years M&A advisers and some bank chief executives have insisted that Europe’s banks need to reduce capacity and competition to improve their dire profitability.
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