Chief executive Andrea Orcel has made it clear that Central and Eastern Europe remains at the heart of UniCredit, not least through the purchase of Greek lender Alpha Bank’s Romanian operations last year.
This was the Italian group’s most important acquisition anywhere for many years and an important milestone for Orcel, who became CEO in 2021.
Crucially, the strategy is also about making sure the various bits of the group are better-connected, including CEE countries.
“Now we have a pan-European group which operates as a group,” Orcel told Euromoney late last year. “We’re connecting the group through common product factories; common technology, in which we’re converging the IT architecture and getting cost synergies; and a common culture.”
Private banking and wealth management is a vital part of this equation.
In Bulgaria, for example, UniCredit already has a top-ranking position for high net-worth individuals. It has sought to solidify that position and has consequently notched up good growth in client assets and wallet share.