UniCredit CEO: 'Not given up' on Commerzbank takeover

Well, look, I think for us, I would summarize it with great performance, great prospects, and we're becoming more bullish. Great shareholder returns now and in the future. And as I continue to say, our people continue to strive to beat quarter after quarter, and we've done that 19 times now. So, yeah, it is a record third quarter, record nine months. We are on our way to our best year ever. We are very focused on beating all our KPIs both in net revenue, in cost, in capital. We have generated more capital than we thought we would generate. But the underlying important point is that we're accelerating faster than what we thought we would accelerate when we built the three-year plan that we announced earlier this year. So the underlying is doing better. We are reviewing our prospects. We think that we will be reviewing targets probably upwards with the year-end results. And for that reason, we're now considering to take a number of new investments to accelerate the performance of 27, 28 mostly and a little bit of 26.

No, no, no, no. What I would say is continue to invest. I think what JFK said, you build your roof when the sun is shining. We have our roof as you can see, but I think we continue to reinforce the core performance of the bank given the record results and given that we are witnessing that all of our countries and all of our business are accelerating better than expected. We will be taking new investments and we're considering the magnitude of them and we will be taking the cost of those investments into Q4 to further accelerate 26, 27, and 28 for shareholders remuneration and distribution. And I think that as you will see in my presentation, if you look at what consensus expected from us in terms of distribution to shareholders post the stakes, our dividends are up.

Our share buybacks are slightly down but together with dividend the total distribution of these two is in line to before. But what we now have is six and a half billion invested in two stakes that through consolidation are adding one billion more than we had in our numbers before to 27 and that billion is growing and is growing at the same speed as us without consuming any capital. So you could say that the shareholder remuneration will remain top tier if not best-in-class for the next three years.

Well, look, I think when we did the first multi-year plan of phase two of our UniCredit Unlocked acceleration, there were two things that have changed. One, we had just launched an offer on BPM and two we were extrapolating or trying to map what could be the extent of our acceleration. Today we don't have BPM anymore and our acceleration is faster. As our acceleration is faster, to give you an example, Italy has worked on a new growth plan. That growth plan requires further investment in our network, in our people, more people, in our technology, in AI to propel the results further. The other countries are on same level. So all the investments that we're going to make are going to be expensed towards a year that is a record year without affecting significantly the fact that it will be a record year. But in this way putting more gasoline to the growth trajectory of our earnings and our distribution.

A little bit more in 26 because most of this action will hit in 27 and 28. But we're working on having a 26 that doesn't disappoint.

Well, look, I would say this. Our association with Alpha Bank is excellent. They work with us probably more tightly than some of the other banks in the group. They're very excited about the partnership. I'm very excited about the partnership. They have allowed us to find out that the setup of a group with centralized best-in-class factories and all the partnership that we have in technology, in AI, in cards, etc., and the blueprint on how we do banking can be extended to partners, therefore capturing a lot more value than we thought we could capture especially cross-border. So as we saw that and as we were asked, we were very happy to consolidate our stake and it is probable that at some point we will round it up to about 30%. And why wait? Because we work very well with them. It doesn't add much to do anything else at the moment. But I would recognize that Greece grows much further than the core EU, they're above 2% of GDP. They are very welcoming to foreign investment. There is a very pro-business attitude and I cannot speak well enough about the country, about how we were welcomed and about all the initiatives that we're doing.