Intesa and UniCredit to set up fund for non-performing loans

Italy's top two banks, Intesa Sanpaolo and UniCredit, are in preliminary talks with U.S. investor KKR about setting up a fund to hold some of their bad debts, Reuters reports.

(Photo: I.Vukša)

Potentially, this would make it possible for KKR to benefit from the recovery of Italy's economy.

According to some other sources, this initiative is focused on so-called restructured loans that were already discussed before. In late September, before the write-off, such loans at UniCredit Banca and Intesa Sanpaolo amounted to EUR 8.1 billion and EUR 2.5 billion, respectively.

The banks declined to comment, while KKR was unavailable.