Monte Paschi Is Europe’s Worst Lender as UniCredit Deal Looms

  • Italian lender could cut about 5,000 jobs amid merger, Stampa
  • A sale to UniCredit would be government’s favored option

Outside a branch of Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena SpA bank in Rome.

Photographer: Alessia Pierdomenico/Bloomberg
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A day after UniCredit Spa announced talks to buy it, Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena SpA was the worst performer in European regulators’ stress tests and the only one to have a key measure of capital wiped out.

That’s creating questions over the mechanics of a deal engineered by UniCredit Chief Executive Officer Andrea Orcel and the Italian Treasury, which first bailed out Monte Paschi, the world’s oldest lender, in 2009.