UniCredit lifts profit guidance, leaving Banco BPM bid behind

• The bank's results come a day after it announced it was withdrawing its bid to acquire Banco BPM, whose offer period was due to naturally expire on Wednesday.

UniCredit on Wednesday posted a sharp second-quarter profit hike and lifted its full-year guidance, a day after withdrawing its takeover bid for Italian peer Banco BPM amid opposition from Rome.

Italy's second-largest bank reported a 25% year-on-year hike in net profit to 3.3 billion euros ($3.87 billion) in the second quarter when including one-off items, and 2.9 billion euros without them.

UniCredit said it now expects full-year net profit to hit 10.5 billion euros, compared with previous guidance at 9.3 billion euros issued in the first quarter.

The bank's results come a day after it announced it was withdrawing its bid to acquire Banco BPM, whose offer period was due to naturally expire on Wednesday. UniCredit said the takeover attempt was impacted by the Italian government's exercise of its “golden power” rules, which enable Rome to intercede in transactions believed to impact national security — and which Giorgia Meloni's government exercised to impose a spate of conditions to clear the transactions.

This “prevented UniCredit from engaging with BPM's shareholders as a normal offer process would have allowed,” UniCredit said Tuesday.