UniCredit in retreat

It was no secret in the market that dissatisfaction at UniCredit, a conglomerate formed by the merger of about 20 different financial institutions, rose sharply after the bank told its FX staff by email that none of them would be receiving any form of bonus for their performance in 2008. This was despite the business having what insiders say was a very good year. Sources suggest that the move was one of the factors that prompted the departure of Ben Welsh from the bank in early April. Welsh was hired in September 2007 at a time when hopes were high within UniCredit that it would be able to meld together its numerous disparate parts and capitalize on what it described as its size and distribution network.