Italian bank UniCredit has opened a corporate and investment banking branch in the UAE. Abu Dhabi’s wealth fund Aabar has a stake in the Italian bank. The bank plans to provide financial services to businesses between the region and Europe and the wider Middle East from its base in Abu Dhabi Global Market (ADGM). It will not be catering to individual clients. Jean Pierre Mustier, UniCredit CEO, said the GCC represents an important destination for UniCredit’s clients, with more than 1,000 European organizations already established in the market, operating in industries critical to the GCC’s development such as trading, manufacturing, construction, utilities and oil and gas. He added that the bank’s ‘One Bank’, ‘One UniCredit’ vision for a simple, successful pan-European commercial bank with a fully plugged-in CIB delivering a unique western, central and eastern European network has also a lot to offer. The bank will initially focus on transaction banking and financing, mostly in euros and US dollars. The commercial lending will center on working capital and term loans, commodity trade finance and structured loans.
