UniCredit widens search for buyers to sell out of Russia

MILAN: Italian bank UniCredit has widened its search for a buyer for its Russian business beyond local investors, as it steps up efforts to leave the country, two people with knowledge of the matter said.

UniCredit held talks with local bidders, but escalating Western sanctions have hampered those efforts, prompting an extension of the search to include countries such as China and India where one of the sources said buyers could be open to a bargain.

The second source said that discussions with potential investors were taking place but did not name them. Shares in UniCredit rose more than 2% in early trade on Monday, outperforming the sector.

UniCredit CEO Andrea Orcel told analysts in May that the sanctions had progressively reduced the chances of a deal with a Russian buyer, and “the window has become quite small”.

Russian businessman Vladimir Potanin, whose Interros holding company bought Societe Generale’s Russian unit Rosbank, told the Interfax news agency in May he had turned down a proposal to also buy the local arm of UniCredit.

The Italian lender is looking elsewhere, though a Russian deal remained possible, the sources said, asking not to be named because of the sensitivity of the issue. A UniCredit spokesperson declined to comment.

Investors in China, India or Turkey - countries that have not backed sanctions against Russia - could be interested in assets whose price has been lowered by the flight of Western firms following the war in Ukraine. UniCredit is among Europe’s banks with the largest exposure to Russia, where it runs the country’s 14th-largest lender.