AfE 2024
Under group chief executive Andrea Orcel, UniCredit has reaffirmed its commitment to central and eastern Europe – highlighted by its announcement of the €300 million purchase of Alpha Bank Romania, part of a deal that also involved it taking a stake in the Athens-based group.
Today, despite exits after 2008 from markets such as Kazakhstan and Ukraine, as well as later sales in Poland and Turkey initiated under former chief executive Jean Pierre Mustier, UniCredit still has a top-five market share in nine of the region’s markets.
If it goes ahead as planned, the Alpha deal will propel UniCredit from Romania’s fourth to third-biggest bank, with a balance sheet of about €13 billion.
Speaking on a banking panel moderated by Euromoney earlier this year, UniCredit’s head of central and eastern Europe Teodora Petkova said that the bank’s “plan is to continue to grow at an accelerated pace” in the region.
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