Barclays bids for Italian bank branches.

Byline: AFP 

MILAN: British bank Barclays has made an improved offer of 540 million euros (804.6 million dollars) for 135 branches of Italian Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena (BMPS), the newspaper Il Messagero reported on Tuesday.

The report, which highlights expansion by Barclays despite the crisis, said the British bank had made an approach equivalent to about four million euros per branch office, an increase from 2.5 million euros proposed a year ago. The offer was conditional on due diligence enquiries, the report said.

BMPS declined to comment and the newspaper report said that it was waiting for another offer from Italian bank Intesa Sanpaolo.

A source close to the matter told AFP two weeks ago that Barclays was interested in buying the BMPS branch offices as part of its development strategy.

The newspaper Il Sole 24 Ore reported at that time that BMPS, obliged by competition regulators to dispose of these assets after buying Italian bank Antonveneta in 2007, was setting a price of 5.0 million euros per branch or a total of 675 million euros.

Last week, the managing director of Italian Banco Popolare, Pier Francesco Saviotti, said Barclays was discussing with it the possible purchase of its investment bank Efibanca.

Barclays is unusual among European banks in that it is expanding. Last year it picked up cheaply the North American activities of failed US investment banking giant Lehman Brothers and now appears particularly interested in southern Europe.

On Monday it announced that it was paying 226 million pounds (about 250 million euros) for the savings and property loan business of British life assurance group Standard Life. On the Milan bourse, shares in BMPS were down 2.24 percent while the wider market slipped 0.81 percent.

Muscat Press and Publishing House SAOC 2009

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