From Bloomberg:
UniCredit SpA is considering thousands of job cuts and slashing operating costs as part of a new strategic plan to be unveiled in December, according to people familiar with the matter.
The Italian lender is weighing as many as 10,000 cuts, though final numbers are still under review and may be much lower, the people said, asking not to be identified as the matter is private. The dismissals will involve staff in Italy -- where the company has the largest number of employees -- as well as in other countries, they said. UniCredit may also reduce other operating expenses by as much as 10% in the plan, the people said.Chief Executive officer Jean Pierre Mustier is preparing his next set of targets after exceeding cost-cutting and asset quality goals in the previous three-year plan. Mustier, who spent the first part of his tenure cleaning up bad loans, reducing jobs and strengthening the balance sheet, has already said that he expects to accelerate the run down of non-essential business, reduce its holdings of Italian sovereign debt and improve the capital buffer.“Job cuts of such a size would be ambitious and exceed analysts expectations,” said Nicola Maino, who helps manage 1 billion euros ($1.1 billion) at Swiss investment firm Carthesio SA. “This move shows the CEO’s commitment to reduce the cost-to-income ratio to a level that will put the bank among the best in Europe.”...
....MUCH MORE
*They are the corporate successors to Creditanstalt.
I kid you not. They should have been strangled at birth.
See Feb. 2009's "Creditanstalt Redux?: Failure to save East Europe will lead to worldwide meltdown":
Creditanstalt failed in May 1931. From Kindleberger's "World in Depression: 1929-1939":
In 1929, the Bodenkreditanstalt was fused overnight with the Creditanstalt. The Bodenkreditanstalt brought to the Creditanstalt large loans to industrial concerns which could be maintained only by the device of ignoring market values...Hmmm, sounds familiar.
Unicredit now owns Creditanstalt.
After the rescue of the bankrupt corpus and a couple mergers CA became part of Italy's Unicredit in 2006.When Creditanstalt collapsed it brought on the second, nastier phase of the Great Depression.
I always think of that when I see UniCredit's name.
Probably related:
"Deutsche Bank job cuts are tip of the iceberg for the finance industry"
