UniCredit has, for the past few years, failed to add up to the sum of its parts. One of Italy's two largest banks and a major heavyweight in central and eastern Europe (CEE), the bank struggled to digest Germany's HVB, which it acquired in 2005, and, as the financial crisis unfolded, its aggressive growth into CEE did not serve the bank well. Similarly, it was punished by the bad debts of Italy's Capitalia, which it acquired at the top of the market in 2007.
A new management team is hoping to turn all the individual pieces of UniCredit into the powerful machine they should represent. Federico Ghizzoni took over as CEO in September 2010 after Alessandro Profumo was pushed out because of squabbles with shareholders. In March 2011, he hired Jean Pierre Mustier, former CEO of Société Générale Corporate & Investment Bank (who was shunted from SGCIB to head up the asset management business following the Jerome Kerviel affair, and left the bank in August 2009) to build-up UniCredit's CIB operations.
