"We cannot think of multiplying the first quarter results by four, which are almost too good. We do not extrapolate from this quarter to full year results”. It is an invitation to caution that launched at theIntesa Sanpaolo shareholders' meeting by Enrico Cucchiani, managing director of the Bank.
As for the dividend, "we feel the moral commitment to arrive at a situation that allows us to distribute a dividend at least equal to that of 2011", added Cucchiani.
“We work with limited leverage – the manager underlined several times as he opened the meeting in Turin-. This is not a finance bank, but an institution at the service of the real economy. Our strategy today consists in working with particularly low leverage, because in this context of volatility we want to have less exposure to the risk of adverse scenarios”.
However, Cucchiani specified that the decision to limit leverage did not negatively impact the institution's profitability: "Our Rote (Return on tangible equity, ed.) was 3% higher than the average of the 17 major European banks".
At the beginning of the afternoon, the Intesa Sanpaolo stock dropped 0,6%.
