Annual Report - VÚB banka

Address by the Chairman of the VUB
Supervisory Board
2
Dear Shareholders, Clients and Business Partners,
Employees
VUB had in 2007 a very successful year. The Bank
has succeeded to improve its shares of the fast
growing loan and deposit markets, yet further improving
profi tability and effi ciency. In particular,
VUB grew its volumes of bank deposits by 15% and
loans by 34%, outstripping the market’s growth by
two and ten percentage points, respectively. Unlike
the banking sector, which saw its net profi t decline
over the previous year, VUB group’s net profi t increased,
by 9%. Meanwhile VUB’s cost-to-income
ratio fell below fi fty percent, for the fi rst time ever.
On behalf of the Supervisory Board, I would like to
thank the management and employees for these
excellent achievements.
Special thanks goes to Mr Tomas Spurny, whose fi -
ve-year stay as VUB’s CEO and Chairman had been
primal in successfully turning the Bank into today’s
modern and dynamic market leader. After such a
successful period, Mr Spurny decided in mid-2007
to move on. I take this opportunity to welcome on
board VUB’s new CEO and Chairman, Mr Ignacio
Jaquotot, a seasoned Intesa Sanpaolo executive,
who had been with VUB since March 2005, acting
as a deputy CEO and deputy Chairman of the Management
Board.
The year 2007 had been the sixth full year under
the strategic ownership of Banca Intesa, now Intesa
Sanpaolo. In many ways, this past year marked
an end to one era and the beginning of a new one,
for VUB as well as its sister banks in Central and
Eastern Europe. In particular, the growing presence
of Intesa Sanpaolo in the region has inevitably
called for an enhanced coordination of activities,
including adoption of a new image that will identify
all of the Group’s international banks. After all, by
serving over 7.2 million customers in 12 countries
in Central and Eastern Europe and the Mediterranean
Basin, Intesa Sanpaolo is one of the top players
and a major protagonist in the development of
these countries. Besides, Intesa Sanpaolo itself is
a major force in the European-wide banking area,
boasting market capitalization that is the third and
eight largest from among the banking groups in the
Eurozone and the World, respectively.
The new visual identity of Intesa Sanpaolo subsidiary
banks - unveiled at the beginning of 2008
- aims to ensure they are immediately recognized
as part of such a large international Group, sharing
equal values and styles in relations to customers
and economic community. At the same time, Intesa
Sanpaolo has always believed that the economic,
social and cultural environment in which it operates
– both in Italy, and abroad, including Slovakia – represent
a heritage to be respected and enhanced.
This belief is refl ected in the re-branding strategy,
which in case of Slovakia maintains the current
name of the Bank but restyles it with the colors,
lettering and the logo of the Group. VUB’s new visual
identity will thus feature a Group’s logo, characterized
by the pictogram of a Roman aqueduct,
and the Bank’s name: VUB BANKA. The aqueduct
symbolically represents solidity, technological development
but also life, prosperity, and the union
between peoples and cultures. The aqueduct, as
Annual Report 2007