Leading Italian bank UniCredit has posted a massive loss of 14 billion euros for 2013.<br /><br />Much of that was as it wrote off bad loans that it knows will never be repaid, along with so-called goodwill – the paper value of assets – in Italy, Austria and central and eastern Europe.<br /><br />The writedowns are to clean up its balance sheet ahead of checks on the financial health of European lenders by the region’s regulators.<br /><br />Without them Unicredit would have made a 916.5 million euros net profit in 2013, according to the consensus of forecasts from a poll of analysts carried out by Thomson Reuters <br /><br />It will also cut 8,500 jobs by 2018 There will be 5,700 layoffs in Italy, 1,500 in Germany and 900 in Austria. <br /><br />The bank sharply wrote down the value of its acquisitions since 2005 which was when it became a major force in Europe through the purchase of Germany’s HypoVereinsbank and its extensive operations in Central and Eastern Europe.<br /><br />It will sell its Ukrainian subsidiary and has set aside 600 million euros to cover losses on that. <br /><br />Unicredit is also planning to list its Fineco online banking unit and to sell its bad loans management unit.<br /><br />The moves were welcomed in the financial markets which noted Italy’s biggest bank in terms of assets is not going to have to raise more capital. <br /><br />UniCredit’s shares rose 6.04 percent.
