UniCredit: Mustier’s magical year

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UniCredit: Mustier’s magical year

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As a self-described ‘insider-outsider’ at UniCredit, Jean Pierre Mustier has transformed the image of Italy’s biggest bank – inside and out – over an extraordinary 12 months as CEO.

It starts with a memo. The board of UniCredit has approached Jean Pierre Mustier, the bank’s former head of corporate and investment banking, to return to the firm as its CEO. For the move to work, Mustier knows exactly what the board needs to let him do. He already knew the core of it when he quit the bank in 2014. Two years later, it does not take him long to write it down.

It is June 2016 when Mustier writes his two-page memo to the board. His appointment comes on June 30. On July 11, UniCredit announces a strategic review in a press release that almost precisely mirrors his memo. On the same day, it launches the first deal of his tenure, the sale of a stake in FinecoBank.

The 12 months that follow will be among the busiest of his career. They will also be among the best.

To put the bank on a sounder footing, Mustier presides over a flurry of asset sales, a complex transfer of the bank’s non-performing loan book and a €13 billion rights issue.

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Mark Baker is deputy editor. Prior to joining Euromoney magazine he was based in Hong Kong as managing editor, Asia, for the Capital Markets Group. He previously edited EuroWeek magazine and was also deputy editor at International Financing Review.
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Dominic O’Neill is EMEA editor. He joined Euromoney in 2007 to cover emerging markets, focusing on central and eastern Europe, Middle East and Africa, and later on Latin America. Based in London, he has covered developed market banking since 2015.
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