OREANDA-NEWS. July 20, 2011. UniCredit was subject to the 2011 EU-wide stress test conducted by the European Banking Authority (EBA), in cooperation with Bank of Italy, the European Central Bank (ECB), the European Commission (EC) and the European Systemic Risk Board (ESRB).

UniCredit notes the announcements made today by the EBA and Bank of Italy on the EU-wide stress test and fully acknowledges the outcomes of this exercise.

The EU-wide stress test, carried out across 90 banks covering over 65% of the EU banking system total assets, seeks to assess the resilience of European banks to severe shocks and their specific solvency to hypothetical stress events under certain restrictive conditions.

The assumptions and methodology were established to assess banks’ capital adequacy against a 5%[1] Core Tier 1 capital benchmark and are intended to restore confidence in the resilience of the banks tested. The adverse stress test scenario was set by the ECB and covers a two-year time horizon (2011-2012). The stress test has been carried out using a static balance sheet assumption as at December 2010. The stress test does not take into account future business strategies and management actions and is not a forecast of UniCredit profits.

As a result of the assumed shock, the estimated consolidated Core Tier 1 capital ratio of UniCredit would change to 6.7% under the adverse scenario in 2012 compared to 7.8%? as of end of 2010. This result does not take into account the ordinary shares underlying the usufruct agreement entered into with another institution, in the context of a transaction denominated CASHES, which are anyway considered in the supervisory recognized capital ratio that lands at 7.2% in 2012.

The CASHES are equity-linked instruments, issued for a countervalue of Euro 2,983,000,000 in February 2009 by The Bank of New York (Luxembourg) SA, with a maturity on December 15, 2050 and convertible, under certain conditions, into 967,564,061 ordinary shares of UniCredit S.p.A. underwritten by Mediobanca in the context of the capital increase approved by the UniCredit Extraordinary Shareholders' Meeting on November 14, 2008. Therefore, since such shares are already issued, they are fully loss absorbing as any other ordinary share.

Following completion of the EU-wide stress test, the results determine that UniCredit meets the capital benchmark set out for the purpose of the stress test. The bank will continue to ensure that appropriate capital level must be maintained.

“We appreciate the results of the 2011 EU-wide stress test that confirms UniCredit capital adequacy - Federico Ghizzoni, CEO of UniCredit commented. Under the adverse scenario UniCredit, who conducted the exercise in a particularly strict and very prudential way, has a wide buffer of capital against the threshold of the exercise. Moreover, at the end of March 2011 our Core Tier 1 ratio registered an increase of 48 basis points compared to the value as of 31.12.2010, which was the starting point of the exercise. This confirms the ability of the Group to generate capital organically and allows us to look with confidence at Basel 3”.

[1] Based on EBA methodology, defined specifically for the purpose of the exercise