UniCredit Romania and HVB Tiriac Bank Merge Into UniCredit Tiriac Bank

The merger of the UniCredit Group banking subsidiaries in Romania, HVB Tiriac Bank and UniCredit Romania resulted in a new financial institution, UniCredit Tiriac Bank. Following the international merger between HVB and UniCredit two years ago, the merger in Romania is one of the first finalized in the CEE region.

The new bank"s offer combines the strengths and the best practice of Banca Tiriac, HVB Bank and UniCredit Romania. HVB Bank had solid partnerships with large corporates and multinationals, having a significant portfolio of German and Austrian clients, and a solid Private Banking portfolio. Banca Tiriac was particularly strong on the individual customers segment and SMEs, while UniCredit Romania focused on Romanian medium sized companies as well as Italian and Turkish investors.

A strong management team was selected to head the new bank. The Management Board consists of Rasvan Radu, CEO; Melih Mengu, Vicepresident responsible for the Corporate Business; Andreas Gschwenter, Vicepresident Head of Global Business Services; Marco Cravario, Vicepresident Chief Financial Officer; Armin Huber, Vicepresident responsible with risk . Dan Pascariu is the Chairman of the Board of Administration.

"The most important aspect was to ensure that the client doesn"t feel the bank undergoes a merger", said Dan Pascariu. "The merger itself was built on the idea of taking the best elements from each bank, so at the end of this process the client can only benefit", added Pascariu.

At the end of Q1 2007, the merged banks registered a combined RON 83 mn gross profit (+51% as compared with the merged banks" results the previous year), total revenues of RON 197 mil (+17.7% to Q1 2006) and total assets worth RON 12.07 billion (EUR 3.7 bn).

UniCredit Tiriac Bank is a universal bank with ambitious objectives in delivering high quality products and services to individual clients, private customers, small and mid sized businesses, as well as large Romanian and multinational corporations. UniCredit Tiriac will be close to its more than 600,000 customers through an extensive network of 132 branches in 34 counties. Moreover, clients will be able to use cross-border business service throughout the Group network.