Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria SA's bid to take full ownership of Turkiye Garanti Bankasi A.S. was the largest deal in the European financials sector in November, a month during which several multibillion euro transactions involving banks were announced.
The €2.25 billion deal will see BBVA take the remaining 50.2% stake it did not previously hold in the Turkish retail bank. BBVA executives said the impact of the weakening lira on the entry price made the acquisition highly attractive.
The Spanish bank is becoming increasingly reliant on its emerging markets operations and aims for high-teens revenue growth in Turkey between 2021 and 2024.
The €1.74 billion acquisition of German lender Aareal Bank AG by a private equity consortium led by Advent International Corp. and Centerbridge Partners LP was the second-largest deal of the month, data from S&P Global Market Intelligence shows.
Aareal said the offer price implies a premium of about 35% on its volume-weighted average share price in the three months to Oct. 7, the day it confirmed negotiations with the private equity firms. The bank had been under pressure from activist investors who criticized its performance and remuneration policies.
CaixaBank SA's sale of its remaining 9.92% stake in Austria-based Erste Group Bank AG for €1.5 billion was the third-largest deal in the European financials sector. The disposal means lower earnings for the Spain-based bank but improved capital, according to Berenberg analysts.
Rounding out the top four was Belgian bank-insurance company KBC Group NV's purchase of Raiffeisenbank (Bulgaria) EAD from Austria-based Raiffeisen Bank International AG for a cash consideration of €1.02 billion.
RBI said it decided to sell its Bulgarian operations in order to reallocate capital to key markets. The transaction is expected to have a negative capital impact of about 1 percentage point on KBC's common equity Tier 1 ratio and add about 90 basis points to RBI's CET1 ratio.
Despite the sizeable banking transactions, the insurance segment continued to lead M&A activity in European financials industry by volume, with 23 deals recorded during the month.
For November, 73 transactions were reported in the European financials sector, down 30.48% from 105 a year ago. However, 2021 remains on course to be a busier year for M&A in the sector, with 1,009 deals year-to-date compared to 828 in the same period of 2020.
The U.K. remained the most active geography with a total of 35 deals.
