The €15.4bn acquisition of Germany’s HVB Group by Italy’s UniCredit last month changes the retail landscape of central and eastern Europe (CEE) and south-east Europe (SEE), making UniCredit-HVB the dominant franchise in Poland, Croatia and Bulgaria.
HVB’s total assets in CEE/SEE at the end of 2004 stood at €35.5bn, held predominantly through its Bank Austria Creditanstalt subsidiary, with €32.2bn. UniCredit has assets in the region (excluding Turkey) of €30.1bn. The combined assets are more than double those of Austria’s Erste bank, Belgium’s KBC and Austria’s Raiffeisen (RZB).
