UniCredit

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UniCredit S.p.A.

Type	Public
Founded	1473 (as Rolo Banca)
Headquarters	Milan, Milan administrative location Italy
Key people	Dieter Rampl, Chairman Alessandro Profumo, CEO
Industry	Finance and Insurance
Products	Financial Services
Operating income	▲ €23.464 billion EUR (2006)
Net income	▲ €5.448 billion EUR (2006)
Employees	170,000
Website	www.unicredit.com

UniCredit SpA (FWB: CRI, BIT: UCG) is a Milan-based, pan-European bank, with over 28 million customers and operations in 19 countries. UniCredit's core areas of operations are Italy, Austria and Southern Germany, one of the European Union's wealthiest transnational regions. Moreover the bank has substantial operations in Central & Eastern Europe. It is also known as the UniCredit Group and as UniCredito.

The UniCredit Group has substantial investment banking divisions running in Munich and Frankfurt.

1 Pan-European operations
2 History
3 See also
4 External links

[edit] Pan-European operations

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In total, UniCredit runs 9,200 branches and about 170,000 employees:

in Italy (No. 2 with 16% market share):
- Customer Loans € 122bn (before the merger with Capitalia)
- Customer Deposits € 72bn (before the merger with Capitalia)
- Branches 5,000
- Employees 68,000
- Customers 9.3m

in Germany (No. 3 with 5% market share):
- Customer Loans € 153bn
- Customer Deposits € 61bn
- Branches 681
- Employees 26,000
- Customers 4.0m

in Austria (No. 1 with 18% market share ):
- Customer Loans € 51bn
- Customer Deposits € 35bn
- Branches 405
- Employees 12,000
- Customers 1.8m

in Central and Eastern Europe (No. 1 bank in 4 countries):
- Customer Loans € 41bn
- Customer Deposits € 47bn
- Employees 58,000
- Customers 16.4m

UniCredit is one of the industry's leaders in Central and Eastern Europe:

The Group holds a leading position in Poland, Bosnia, Bulgaria and Croatia, and ranks among the top five in Turkey, Slovakia, Serbia, Romania and the Czech Republic.

There are also significant banking presences in Russia, Ukraine, Hungary, Slovenia and the Baltic states.

[edit] History

Through several mergers only during the 1990s, UniCredit grew into one of the largest banking corporations in Italy.

UniCredit (together with Allianz) bought 52.09% of the Polish Bank Pekao in August 1999. In 2000, UniCredit (together with Allianz) bought 98% of Bulbank, one of the leading Bulgarian banks. In 2002, UniCredit acquired 50% of the Turkish Koçbank. In March the same year, UniCredit again joined with Allianz to buy 96.21% of Zagrebačka banka, the largest Croatian bank. Through them it also acquired what is now UniZaba, the third largest bank in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

On 24th November 2005, UniCredit SpA completed its acquisition of German rival Bayerische HypoVereinsbank Aktiengesellschaft, after shareholders representing 93.93% of the shares accepted the offer of five new UniCredit shares for each HVB share.

HVB in turn owns 94.98% of Bank Austria (which owns 71.03% of Bank BPH from Poland and a bank in Slovenia). UniCredit now also owns several other HVB banks in the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Ukraine, Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, Serbia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina. In Croatia and Poland, the merger caused the group to sell subsidiaries in order to avoid too much market concentration.

In May 2007 Unicredit merged with their smaller Italian rival Capitalia. The deal was worth 22 billion euros and created the second largest bank in Europe by market value (after the London HSBC). The new bank is worth more than 100 billion euros. The "Unicredit" corporate identity will remain in banks located in Northern Italy and abroad, while it will be replaced by Banca di Roma in the rest of mainland Italy and Sardinia, and by Banco di Sicilia in Sicily (after the two Capitalia banks that are already prevalent in those regions).