By Valentina Za, Elvira Pollina and Giuseppe Fonte
MILAN (Reuters) -UniCredit CEO Andrea Orcel is facing persistent requests from the Italian bank’s board to provide detailed and timely updates about his merger and acquisition strategy, four people with knowledge of the matter said.
The strategy has led UniCredit to invest in a number of rival financial institutions over the past year, without yet producing any deals.
A suggestion has been floated internally to appoint a general manager, as debate continues over the extent of the CEO’s M&A remit, the four sources said, with Orcel complaining that frequent requests for documentation and debriefings put a strain on his time and that of his lean internal M&A team.
UniCredit abolished the general manager role in 2019, though it named one for an interim period between CEOs in 2021.
In response to a Reuters request for comment, UniCredit said the board stood by the decision it took in 2021 to approve delegated powers for the CEO over M&A matters.
That widened the range of M&A decisions that Orcel, a veteran dealmaker who advised on Europe’s biggest bank mergers in recent decades, could take without prior board approval.
“The CEO and the board meet regularly and discuss all aspects of the UniCredit strategy, including any M&A activity,” Chairman Pier Carlo Padoan told Reuters.
“These discussions are lengthy and fulsome, with the necessary depth that would be expected from a company of our size dealing with issues of such significance. The hiring of a General Manager has never been discussed and is not felt needed.”
(Reporting by Valentina Za and Elvira Pollina in Milan; Giuseppe Fonte in Rome; Editing by Giselda Vagnoni and Gavin Jones)
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