Piazza Affari closes lower, Mediobanca posts record half-year profit

Milan’s stock exchange closed the session with a slight decline, with the Ftse Mib down 0.1 percent at 53,663 points. A contained movement, which coexisted with corporate news of a different tenor arriving the same day from the banking sector.

Mediobanca closed the half-year with a record profit of 711.2 million euros, up 5.9 percent compared with the previous period. An executive at the institution, Melzi d’Eril, commented on the result, speaking of a “solid performance despite the uncertainty”, according to SoldiOnline.

Data	Value
Ftse Mib	53,663 points (-0.1%)
Mediobanca half-year profit	711.2 million euros (+5.9%)

The corporate picture also includes a decision of a different nature, relating to another banking matter that has been underway for months on the Italian market: the merger project between two credit institutions, reported separately in this edition, stalled on the same day that Mediobanca announced its own record result. The timing coincidence between a rising profit and the halt of a consolidation process points to an Italian banking sector moving on tracks that are not always aligned.

The sources available do not specify the main drivers behind the growth in Mediobanca’s profit, nor do they provide a comparison with analysts’ forecasts for the period. Detailed figures on other items in the half-year results, such as total revenues or provisions, are also not reported.

The news currently comes from a single source, the SoldiOnline editorial staff, which draws on Mediobanca’s corporate statements; no independent confirmation of the reported profit figures is available.

The half-year profit figure, 711.2 million euros, remains the most solid data available to gauge the institution’s performance in the first half of the year.