UK's Parvus hikes UniCredit stake to become Italian bank's No. 2 investor

MILAN (Reuters) - London-based fund Parvus Asset Management has increased its holding in UniCredit to 5%, becoming the second-biggest investor in the Italian bank, data showed on Monday.

A shareholder in mid-sized Italian bank UBI at the time of the Intesa Sanpaolo takeover, Parvus has long been an investor in UniCredit, founder Edoardo Mercadante told Reuters.

Parvus has gradually added to its UniCredit stake over time until it crossed the 5% threshold that triggers disclosure obligation, he said.

UniCredit is one of the European banks most heavily exposed to Russia and its shares have suffered heavy losses in the wake of Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

A filing with market regulator Consob showed Parvus held 5.059% of the bank led by former UBS investment banking chief Andrea Orcel as of May 6.

A day earlier, in presenting first-quarter results, Orcel had surprised markets by announcing UniCredit was about to start a 1.6 billion-euro share buyback it had made conditional on the size of Russia-related losses.

Shares in UniCredit have been heavily hit by the bank's large exposure to Russia, losing 39% of their value since early February due to concerns about capital distribution plans.

The stock has rebounded 15% since the release of quarterly results on May 5 and the buyback announcement.

Based on data from UniCredit's website, Parvus is the second-biggest investor in the bank after BlackRock, which holds 5.26%, and before Allianz which owns 3.19%.

U.S. fund Capital Research and Management last week cut to 3.98% its previous 6.77% stake that made the California firm the largest investor in UniCredit.

The escalation of the Ukraine crisis had prompted hedge funds facing large redemptions to dump UniCredit shares and also triggered selling from nonspeculative investors, a person with knowledge of the matter said.

(Reporting by Valentina Za in Milan; Editing by Matthew Lewis)