UniCredit has announced that it wants to open
another 900 branches across central and Eastern Europe (CEE) to
exploit the business potential in emerging markets.
UniCredit’s chief executive Federico Ghizzoni
said the bank plans to achieve this target by 2015.
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UniCredit is the biggest bank in CEE with assets
of $141 billion. Third quarter pre-tax profits at its units in
emerging Europe more than tripled in €366m ($485.2m).
The bank said last month that its emerging market
focus will primarily be on the bigger markets in Russia, Poland and
Turkey – the most promising markets according to Ghizzoni.
The three countries accounted for 72% of
Unicredit’s revenues from CEE to date. The bank expects this trend
to continue for the next two years.
In Turkey, the bank wants to grow further
organically through Yapi Kredi, in which it owns a 50% stake. It is
going to open 300 branches in Turkey, raising the total number to
1215 by 2015.
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By GlobalDataAnother 300 will be opened in Romania – but the
Ghizzoni classified the country as “fragile” along with Ukraine,
Bulgaria and Kazakhstan.
He said that the Kazakhstan unit was not on sale
and that the bank was undergoing a restructuring. UniCredit bought
Kazakhstan’s fifth- largest lender AO ATF Bank for $2.1 billion in
2007.
In Hungary, the bank is going to open 120
branches, raising the total number to 255.
Ghizzoni said that the remaining number of
branches will be mainly allocated to Russia, Bulgaria and
Serbia.
He added that UniCredit will keep its “eyes open”
in Poland and “monitor carefully” the banking sector in Romania and
Bulgaria.
UniCredit wants to open more branches of its
Polish subsidiary Bank Pekao, the country’s second biggest bank by
assets.
UniCredit currently has 9,585 branches across 22
countries, 214 less than last fiscal.
In Italy alone, the bank’s current branch network
consists of 4513 hubs. It closed 183 branches since last year.
But in other markets, the bank only closed a total of 31
branches between September 2009 and September 2010, taking the
total number of branches to 5072.
UniCredit derived 56% of its total group profits
from the CEE markets in the nine months to September 2010.
