UniCredit €13bn rights offering 99.8% subscribed

UniCredit, Italy’s largest bank by assets, said on Thursday that its €13bn rights offering was 99.8 per cent subscribed, as it fights to shore up its capital position.

The rights issue had been fixed at a 38 per cent discount at the start of the month and was to see shareholders receive 13 new shares for every five they own.

UniCredit chief executive Jean-Pierre Mustier launched the rights issue earlier this month to raise new capital as part of an aggressive turn-around plan for the lender, which has suffered from weak capital and profitability.

It reported a €13.6bn loss in the fourth quarter driven in part by a write-down of loans that had soured. That in turn helped push its common equity tier 1 ratio (CET ratio), a key measure of financial strength, to 7.54 per cent, down from 10.8 per cent in the previous quarter.