The extraordinary general meeting of Where's Banca approved by an overwhelming majority farewell to the dualistic model of governance, with the transition to the one-tier model. 99,86% of the capital present at the meeting voted in favor (equal to 43,5% of the total capital).
The new monistic governance provides a single BoD of 15 members (of which up to 3 representatives of minorities). The control function is assigned to an internal committee, the Management Control Committee, made up of 5 members and chaired by a minority director.
The new system will come in effective as of April 2019, when the current board of directors has finished its mandate and a new one will have to be elected.
For possible aggregations, "we have shown that we have a strong and important machine, capable of making them - commented the CEO of Ubi, Victor Massiah, in the press conference held at the end of the meeting in Bergamo - You know that I personally believe it is inevitable that the Italian banking system reaches levels of concentration of other European nations. But this is not the hot topic at the moment, which is instead that of managing the bank in a stormy sea”.
As for the recurring hypotheses of a possible marriage with Ps, "at the moment I believe that the situation is so complex - added the manager - that the focus is only on knowing how to manage the bank well in every detail".
Massiah admitted that the low quotations could create opportunities for operations, even from abroad and therefore “theoretical contestability is there. But the probability is low right now because foreign investors are intimidated by the uncertainty."
About the new ones Eba stress test coming soon, the CEO said he was calm: "It seems to me that our track record on stress tests has never let us down and I don't think we'll start now".
Finally, regarding the stock prices, “I read and hear that the Ubi Banca share is doing very badly. The stock is as bad as the Stock Exchange is - concluded the manager - In the last 12 months Ubi is the bank that has fared least badly among the 5 major Italian banks: Mps -88%, Banco Bpm -43%, UniCredit -31% , Intesa -30%, Ubi -29%”.
