Federico Ghizzoni, the chief executive of Italy’s UniCredit, has said that the firm expects to receive binding offers for its Pioneer Global Asset Management subsidiary within the next couple of weeks.

Three possible buyers, which include the French firms Natixis and Amundi, are understood to be reviewing Pioneer’s books ahead of possibly making binding offers. Several non-binding offers have been submitted and these mostly involve shares, according to reports. Ghizzoni said earlier in the week that UniCredit is exploring all the options in order to get full value for Pioneer if it is sold, including cash, shares and a mix of the two.

Speculation has suggested that Pioneer may bring in €1.5 billion ($2.1 billion); however, media reports citing unnamed sources have said that the asset manager has a carrying value of €3 billion in UniCredit’s accounts.

Plans for the sale of Pioneer first emerged in May of last year when the bank said it was looking for ways to boost its balance sheet after the credit crisis.

While many wealth management firms and private banks were hit by the infamous, multi-billion dollar Ponzi scheme fraud perpetrated by Bernard Madoff, the affair has caused particular consternation to UniCredit through its links to Bank Medici, the small Viennese private bank which is believed to have been the largest single source of investments into Madoff’s funds and which incurred potential losses of $3.2 billion. Bank Medici is 25 per cent owned by UniCredit’s Bank Austria subsidiary.

At the end of last year reports emerged that UniCredit had been named in a $19.6 billion lawsuit from the US trustee seeking to recover billions of dollars for victims of Madoff’s fraud. The bank was named alongside Bank Medici’s founder Sonja Kohn and over fifty others.