CNH Industrial plans to leave Milan stock market by early 2024

MILAN (Reuters) - Farming and construction machine maker CNH said on Thursday it would drop out of Milan's stock exchange and leave its shares listed only in New York, the latest heavyweight company to quit the market.

The group said its primary plan is to achieve a plain delisting from Milan and do so by early 2024, but did not rule out alternative paths to achieve the same goal, including a corporate reorganisation.

"Concentrating trading in one market will allow for increased liquidity and investor focus, while further simplifying the company profile and compliance requirements," the company said in a statement.

Shares declined after the news and fell 2% by 1138 GMT, underperforming a 0.8% rise in Italy's blue chip index before recovering some lost ground.

Milan saw an exodus of companies from its market last year, a trend that legislators and regulators would like to reverse.

Among the companies that left the 200-year-old Borsa Italiana last year were Exor itself, while road and airport operator Atlantia departed after a buyout.

Since spinning off its truck-making business Iveco Group last year, most of CNH's stock trading has shifted to New York, showing that the group's new business profile and investor base fit better with a single U.S. listing, it said.

The chief executive of Exor, CNH's parent company, said last November that going from a double to single listing for CNH Industrial did not mean taking the firm private.

CNH Industrial, which has had a dual listing for the past decade, said that Goldman Sachs was acting as its financial advisor for the delisting.

The group is due to report its fourth-quarter results later in the day.

(Reporting by Federico Maccioni; editing by Keith Weir)