"The new CEO of Banca Intesa intends to renew the bank's top management with the aim that the leading bank in the country prepares to be "less Italian" and more "global player" on the market". Thus begins the account of Tomaso Cucchiani's interview with the Financial Times, the first granted after his appointment as director of Intesasanpaolo. “I think it makes sense – says Cucchiani – to have some international representatives in top positions”.
The banker does not name names, but says he is particularly attracted to banking talent emerging in Asia. “We have – continues Intesa's number one – an extremely significant international base. Now I would like to make this network more compact and capable of expressing greater synergies". About a third of the bank's 101 employees work outside Italy. The strategy, however, does not include acquisitions. “Forget about new purchases – he specifies -. The perimeter of Intesa is a fact. This is not the time for creative strategies”.
The priority, however, remains increased capital efficiency. “We must allocate capital where we can maximize the economic return. In this context, the critical factors are risk assessment, repricing and efficiency improvement”. This is the only way to deal with an extremely dangerous situation. The credit landscape, warns Cucchiani, continues to deteriorate. Europe is in a recession and it is inevitable, as the economic landscape deteriorates, that suffering will increase. The determining factor of success, in this framework, to make the difference will be the ability to meet the need for additional capital and to make sufficient provisions to deal with non-performing loans.
