team spirit - Bankier.pl
team spirit - Bankier.pl
team spirit - Bankier.pl
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To our shareholders,<br />
customers and business partners<br />
Ladies and Gentlemen,<br />
Erich Hampel, Chairman of the Managing Board of Bank Austria Creditanstalt AG<br />
In 2005, Bank Austria Creditanstalt achieved the best results in the bank’s history. This success confirms that we have<br />
been moving in the right direction over the past years. Consolidation, targeted growth and the move on to the European<br />
<strong>pl</strong>aying field have paid off. In the new UniCredit Group we have assumed an essential role as sub-holding company for<br />
operations in Central and Eastern Europe. This stands for continuity in our development – we are now <strong>pl</strong>aying in the top<br />
league of the European banking industry.<br />
� Net income before taxes for 2005 amounted to € 1,301 m, exceeding the target of € 1 bn which we set ourselves a<br />
year ago. The increase over the figure for 2004 is more than one-half (52 %). A substantial contribution to this result came<br />
from our successful banking subsidiaries in CEE, which continued to pursue growth in their countries. In Austria, a mature<br />
and overbanked market, we also achieved volume growth and improved the earnings position. The im<strong>pl</strong>ementation of<br />
our new business model is almost com<strong>pl</strong>ete; this will enable us to improve profitability in business with small and mediumsized<br />
companies, too. We reinvested a large part of one-off income generated during the year to improve the structure<br />
of our Austrian business and we also used part of this income to make provisions for <strong>pl</strong>anned integration projects.<br />
� The formation of the new UniCredit Group is another big step forward for Bank Austria Creditanstalt in its long development<br />
into a bank of European stature. As a member of Europe’s fourth-largest bank, we can offer customers in our<br />
markets the status of a major international bank and we can also make better use of our international business expertise.<br />
The large Group benefits from mutual network advantages and can achieve economies of scale in businesses where size<br />
is an advantage. Within the CEE Division of UniCredit Group we will be responsible for further developing operations in<br />
24 countries. In doing so we can draw on integration experience which we have gained in numerous mergers of CEE<br />
subsidiaries of HVB and BA-CA in the past years. And we will also prove our own ability to integrate into the Group.<br />
Bank Austria Creditanstalt and UniCredit com<strong>pl</strong>ement each other perfectly in terms of culture, geography and business<br />
profile. Our structures are very similar, and we have identical objectives and values.<br />
Predecessor institutions in our bank’s 150-year history successfully operated European networks, and we can still find<br />
traces of them today. From the very beginning, Bank Austria Creditanstalt has seen its mission as making a contribution<br />
to European integration by serving its customers. Let us combine strong cross-regional structures with regional diversity,<br />
let us use the opportunity to become a truly European bank!<br />
Yours sincerely,<br />
Erich Hampel<br />
Preface 7