Italian lender BPER has raised its offer to acquire Banca Popolare di Sondrio to €5.4bn ($6.4bn).  

This marks a substantial jump from its initial €4.3bn all-share proposal launched in February this year. 

The offer comprises 1.450 newly issued BPER shares plus a cash payment of €1.00 for each Popolare di Sondrio share. 

The revised bid comes a day after Italy’s antitrust authority, AGCM, conditionally approved the acquisition, requiring BPER to divest six branches—five from BPER and one from Popolare di Sondrio—within 10 months.  

Both banks share a key stakeholder in Unipol, an insurance group that uses them to distribute its products. Unipol endorsed BPER’s bid last week.  

BPER, with over five million clients, more than 1,500 branches, and nearly 20,000 employees as of the end of last year, stands to gain approximately 900,000 customers, close to 400 branches, and around 4,000 employees through the acquisition. 

The revised offer follows remarks from BPER’s Chief Executive, Gianni Franco Papa, who indicated weeks earlier that the bank intended to stick with its original bid. 

In a separate development in Italy’s retail banking sector, UniCredit’s CEO, Andrea Orcel, told La Repubblica that the bank is likely to abandon its proposed acquisition of Banco BPM due to challenges from Italy’s “golden power” conditions and court appeals.  

The European Commission approved the bid, launched in November last year, under the EU Merger Regulation, requiring UniCredit to divest 209 branches in areas with competition concerns.