Italian UniCredit Reports 14 Billion Euro Loss

Italy’s biggest bank, UniCredit, has reported a record annual loss of 14bn euros (£11.7bn; $19bn) and said it plans to cut 8,500 jobs.

The bank, Italy’s biggest by assets, put aside 13.7bn euros to cover losses from bad loans in 2013.

UniCredit is trying to take stock of its financial position before European regulators conduct an industry-wide health-check in the coming months.

The planned job cuts will see the bank lose about 6% of its workforce by 2018.

Despite the news, UniCredit shares rose by almost 6%, after it said it would not need a capital increase, and that it was confident it would get a clean bill of health when the European Central Bank reviews the finances of the eurozone’s 128 biggest banks.

“I believe the group has turned the page,” said UniCredit’s chief executive, Federico Ghizzoni.

“We could have staggered the losses over several years. We decided to take them all in one year.

“I am serene. We have done more than what will be required.”

The bank’s huge loss, largely due to troubles in Italy and Eastern Europe, was one of the worst suffered by a European bank since the beginning of the financial crisis.

via BBC

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Alfonso Esparza

Alfonso Esparza

Senior Currency Analyst at Market Pulse
Alfonso Esparza specializes in macro forex strategies for North American and major currency pairs. Upon joining OANDA in 2007, Alfonso Esparza established the MarketPulseFX blog and he has since written extensively about central banks and global economic and political trends. Alfonso has also worked as a professional currency trader focused on North America and emerging markets. He has been published by The MarketWatch, Reuters, the Wall Street Journal and The Globe and Mail, and he also appears regularly as a guest commentator on networks including Bloomberg and BNN. He holds a finance degree from the Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education (ITESM) and an MBA with a specialization on financial engineering and marketing from the University of Toronto.
Alfonso Esparza