Gros Petro: There is room for a third major bank, and companies are asking for financing

He does not want to enter into the advantages of the activities of other Italian banks, but for the head of Intesa Sanpaolo, Gian Maria Gros Pietro, there is a place in Italy for the third great Italian. When asked about the integration process between Unicredit and Mps and the implications for the banking system, on the sidelines of the ongoing Ambrosetti Forum 2021 in Cernobbio, Gros Pietro noted that in Italy there are two large banks, Intesa Sanpaolo and Unicredit, but in his notice “there is room for a third major Italian bank on least with Italian shareholders.

In fact, we must not forget that there are other large banks that are located in Italy and are not owned by Italy (Credit Agricole and Bnp Paribas, editor), “So there is no problem to compete in Italy because there are strong competitors. If the strong Italian operators are to become At least three we will make customers happier, we will become more efficient and this will help us compete in Europe”, predicted the President of Intesa Sanpaolo, noting that “I will not enter into the advantages of the activities of other banks. Italians, let them work”.

More generally, when asked about the launch of the National Recovery and Resilience Plan, he stressed that “things are going well. It was not clear that a plan of this importance could be approved at the European level. This is a genetic change in the European agreements relating to the structure of the European Union. It was not clear that this plan could allocate such a large share to Italy.”

He admitted that the Italian government respected the times. On the other hand, the crisis being fought is “anomalous, neither financial nor cyclical.” The forced outage of production was followed by a revival, “but the rebound gave us the speed to grow, we’re growing at a pace we’ve never seen in the last 20 years. The goal should be to maintain that speed,” he insisted. Echoing yesterday’s statements by the Prime Minister, Mario Draghi, at a press conference after the Cabinet.

For the 400 billion that Intesa Sanpaolo has set aside as part of the NRP, Gros-Pietro believes Italian companies will “request” these resources, and they already do, even if they raise cash in 2020, “about 90 billion because they didn’t know where to invest. Now, However, there are goals and possibilities and there are potential investment trends that, in my opinion, are the most interesting, the ones that go in the direction of combating climate change, the economy. The trends will dominate the markets in the coming decades, therefore, “concluded,” concluded Intesa Sanpaolo President, “It is important That Italian companies go in this direction.(All rights reserved)