Italy's Mediobanca beats profit forecasts as it fights off MPS bid

MILAN (Reuters) -Italy's Mediobanca on Friday beat market forecasts with its quarterly results, but warned that risks posed by Banca Monte dei Paschi's hostile takeover bid would increase if its own proposed merger with Banca Generali succeeded.

Mediobanca said last month it planned to acquire asset manager Banca Generali and bring wealth management revenue to 45% of the total from 26% at present as it sought to fend off an unsolicited bid from smaller rival Banca Monte dei Paschi (MPS).

"The MPS offer for Mediobanca presents numerous risk factors" and they "would be further amplified with the combination Mediobanca-Banca Generali", the merchant bank said in a statement, without elaborating further.

Mediobanca will seek shareholder approval for the Banca Generali deal on June 16 and CEO Alberto Nagel has said he hopes the plan's backing would signal investors' intention to reject the Monte dei Paschi's proposal, which aims to combine its and Mediobanca's bank networks

Some of Mediobanca's investors, including its biggest shareholder Delfin, have welcomed the Banca Generali acquisition proposal, though they said they did not necessarily see a conflict between that plan and the MPS bid.

Mediobanca reported a net profit of 334 million euros ($374.95 million) in the third quarter of its financial year that ends on June 30, beating a bank-provided analyst consensus of 304 million euros.

Revenues increased by 3% year-on-year to 920 million euros, surpassing expectations thanks to the contributions from all banking divisions.

Mediobanca confirmed its full-year outlook, including earnings per share growth in the 6%-8% range and is set to pay an interim dividend of 0.56 euros per share later this month.

($1 = 0.8908 euros)

(Reporting by Gianluca Semeraro; editing by Alvise Armellini, Valentina Za and Tomasz Janowski)