agreement to merge their asset-management businesses in a transaction valuing the combined entity at about €5.4 billion. The accord created a holding company called Pioneer Investments that is 50 percent owned by UniCredit and 50 percent held by the U.S. buyout firms Warburg Pincus LLC and General Atlantic LLC. The holding firm owns Pioneer's U.S. business and controls combined operations of UniCredit's Pioneer, excluding its U.S. activities, and Santander Asset Management. The two lenders hold each one-third of the new combined business, while Warburg Pincus and General Atlantic owns the rest. However, the deal was terminated on 27 July 2016. Nevertheless, Pioneer was sold in December 2016 to Amundi for €3.545 billion. UniCredit also received an extraordinary dividend of €315 million from Pioneer. From June 2015 to January 2017 UniCredit sold its NPLs that was doubtful to collect (sofferenze) to various investors, namely PRA Group Europe (€625 million gross), a fund managed by Cerberus Capital Management (€100 million gross), a US fund (€150 million gross), AnaCap Financial Partners (€420 million gross), Fortress Investment Group and PIMCO (€17.7 billion gross; UniCredit retained a minority stake in the securitization SPV), B2 Kapital (€110 million in gross from Slovenian subsidiary) and B2Holding (€93 million from UniCredit Bulbank). In October 2015, UniCredit also sold UniCredit Credit Management Bank (now doBank), the subsidiary that specialized in managing NPLs to Fortress Investment Group and Prelios S.p.A. A portfolio of €2.4 billion (in gross book value) NPLs was included in the deal. On a year to year basis, the net value of sofferenze had increased from €19.701 billion on 31 December 2014 to €19.924 billion on 31 December 2015 (or from €52.143 billion to €51.089 billion in gross). In December 2016 UniCredit sold Polish bank Bank Pekao. UniCredit had already sold part of the stake in FinecoBank in mid 2016, as well as sold Ukrainian bank Ukrsotsbank to Alfa Group in January 2016. In December 2016, the card business in Italy, Germany and Austria was sold to SIA for €500 million. On 13 December 2016, despite the annual European Central Bank (ECB) Supervisory Review and Evaluation Process (SREP) lowed the CET1 ratio (transitional basis) requirement of UniCredit from 9.75% to 8.75%, the bank announced a massive €13 billion recapitalization of the bank, as well as €8.1 billion loan loss provisions and net restructuring charges of €1.7 billion in the fourth quarter of 2016. In the 2016 European