MILAN: Credit Agricole has no intention to raise the price of its takeover bid for third-tier Italian lender Credito Valtellinese, the head of the French bank's Italian unit told la Repubblica newspaper in an interview.

The Italian division of France's Credit Agricole last month offered 10.50 euro ($12.84) a share to buy the Italian lender for an overall investment of 737 million euros.

Creval has already said the offer was neither expected nor agreed and sources have said the Italian bank was preparing to battle to secure a better price.

"We continue to consider it an adequate offer for all of Creval's stakeholders, not just the shareholders, so we do not intend to revise the price," Giampiero Maioli told the paper, adding he was confident to kick off the bid before end-March.

The executive added that if the number of shareholders that take up the offer were not sufficient to pursue its planned project, Credit Agricole could give up on the bid without it changing its strategy in Italy.