The head of Italy’s largest bank UniCredit, Alessandro Profumo, was forced to resign from his leading position due to a dispute with German and Italian shareholders regarding the increase of Libya’s shareholding.
The bank announced after a four-hour meeting on Tuesday evening that "the management has taken the position that the time has come for changes in the leadership of the group." "Therefore, Alessandro Profumo has offered his resignation," the statement adds. He will be temporarily replaced by UniCredit’s chairman Dieter Rampel until a successor is found in the coming weeks. The dispute regarding the Libyan shareholding turned some German and Italian shareholders against Profumo. Shares in UniCredit held by the Libyan central bank and the local state stabilization fund, the Libyan Investment Authority, have together exceeded 7.5 percent this year, making Libya the largest single shareholder.
Italian regulations prohibit any individual shareholder’s voting stake from exceeding five percent. This development has caused dissatisfaction among some shareholders, who accused Profumo of not informing them about it, media reports. Tension had already emerged after weak business results last year, when the bank’s net profit plummeted by 57.6 percent to 1.702 billion euros. Profumo has been at the helm of the bank since 1997 and has overseen significant international expansion of the Italian bank, particularly in Central and Eastern Europe. UniCredit merged with the German lender HVB in 2005. Profumo is also the president of the European Banking Association based in Brussels. Upon leaving his leadership position, he could receive a package amounting to 40 million euros, reports the Italian news agency Ansa. The bank has not confirmed the stated amount. (H)
