Takeovers of listed companies in Europe are off to their fastest start since 2017 but deal stats have been inflated by one large-cap strategic tie-up which may or may not make it over the line. 

Banca dei Monte Paschi di Siena’s [BIT:BMPS] swoop on Italian banking peer Mediobanca [BIT:MB], at an equity value of EUR 13.3bn, was announced on Friday (24 January) and took year-to-date dealmaking to around EUR 15bn in equity value.

It’s the fastest start to a year since January 2017 when Luxottica bid EUR 23bn for Essilor, and Johnson & Johnson [NYSE:JNJ] offered CHF 31bn (EUR 29bn at the time) for Actelion.

Up to the same point in January last year, five deals worth around EUR 6bn had been announced. Five deals have also been announced so far this year, according to Dealogic data.

BMPS’s bid for Mediobanca is the latest in a sequence of ambitious M&A attempts in Europe in recent months that are subject to a high degree of execution risk. With most of 2025’s announced deal value concentrated in this transaction, it’s perhaps too early to get excited.

The transaction is perhaps the quirkiest of a string of recent proposed financial services deals which now dominate the list of Europe’s biggest ongoing transactions. All have been pitched at low premiums, often in the single digits.

Shares in Mediobanca, which is technically the target in this transaction but has a larger market cap than BMPS, immediately jumped above the offer price after the deal’s announcement last week.

Mediobanca’s stock price closed yesterday at EUR 16.50, some 11% above the implied value of BMPS’s bid. The combined value of the two banks is roughly equal to where it was prior to the deal’s announcement, at EUR 22bn, indicating investors don’t currently see much value in the tie-up.

It is now the largest ongoing deal tracked by Dealreporter on an equity value basis. The implied equity value of EUR 13.3bn exceeds the EUR 11.7bn equity value offered by UAE state-backed oil and gas Adnoc for chemicals producer Covestro [ETR:1COV].

Other large-cap banking deals include Banco Sabadell’s [BME:SAB] proposed acquisition by Madrid-based peer BBVA [BME:BBVA] and an offer for Milan-based Banco BPM [BIT:BAMI] from UniCredit [LON:UCG], both of which were worth around EUR 10bn on announcement.

In both these deals too, the target’s shares are trading above the bidder’s implied offer price.

The terms of some or all of these transactions may need to be amended, while all need to overcome a variety of political, merger-review and other obstacles before reaching completion.

That leaves tens of billions of deal flow, investor dollars and banking fees hinging on the outcome of a few large financial services tie-ups.