Could Italy’s famously secretive Mediobanca be stepping out of the shadows even as it ventures abroad? Last month the legendary 58-year-old Milanese merchant bank made its first-ever presentation to analysts and announced, inter alia, that it would open a deal shop in Paris in May. Chairman Gabriele Galateri di Genola also declared that henceforth “a clear and transparent framework of corporate governance” would be a priority of the bank, which at one time controlled -- or at least appeared to control -- most of Italy’s major companies.
Mediobanca’s new forthrightness may or may not reassure vulnerable French CEOs: The bank is putting a prominent French deal maker, Marc Vincent, 46, in charge of its ten-person office near the Champs Elysées. A product of the elite Ecole Supérieure de Commerce de Paris, Vincent spent the past three years heading Citigroup’s Paris investment banking unit, where he advised Crédit Lyonnais on its E20 billion ($20.4 billion) takeover by Crédit Agricole, and Vivendi on the $14 billion spin-off of its entertainment arm to General Electric’s NBC. Before Citi acquired Schroders’ investment bank, Vincent ran the U.K. bank’s French operation.
He says he left Brobdingnagian Citi for the more boutiquelike Medicobanca because of “the quality of management and the professionalism of the bank, period.” Others, however, suggest that Vincent chafed under Citi’s dual-coverage system, in which both investment and commercial bankers serve the same clients.
Don’t expect Mediobanca’s fresh candor to extend to its deal makers, who are fabled for their discretion. “You can talk about transparency,” says Vincent, “but when you’re in the advisory business, you need to keep things confidential.”
