The management reshuffle at UniCredit continues. Two weeks after setting out his strategy for central and eastern Europe, new chief executive Federico Ghizzoni – himself a former head of CEE at the group – named the man who will be charged with implementing it.
Gianni Franco Papa is a Credito Italiano veteran with 20 years’ experience of international banking, including five years in Singapore as head of the group’s Asia operations and a similar stint in New York as director for the Americas. Following the merger of UniCredit and HVB in 2006, he spent two years in Slovakia integrating the local subsidiaries of the two groups, and in early 2008 he took charge of UniCredit’s newly acquired Ukrainian operation, Ukrasotsbank.
In October last year, as part of the management shake-up following the departure of former chief executive Alessandro Profumo, Papa moved to Vienna to take up the position of head of CEE corporate and investment banking, and on December 14 was handed the top job in the region.
| "The cost of capital is growing, so we have to concentrate where the opportunities are bigger" Gianni Franco Papa, UniCredit |
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It will be a challenge.
