(Finance) – “The merger with the Cassa Rurale ed Artigiana dell’Agro Pontino is an operation based on valid strategic and corporate governance assumptions and which is also characterized by a clear commercial and territorial value”. So the President of the BCC of Rome Maurizio Longhi commented on the outcome of the Bank’s shareholders’ meeting, held today at the Fiera di Roma, which approved the merger project with the Bcc Group’s sister company Iccrea.
The assembly has also approved the 2023 financial statements and renewed the Board of Directors and the Board of Statutory Auditors for the three-year period 2024-2026.
In line with the reasons indicated by the Supervisory Authority in the provision which authorized the merger, the aggregation operation aims to enhance the specific skills of the two banks, adopting strategies consistent with market conditions and the needs of the shareholders, developing the objectives mutualistic and adopting ESG initiatives with a view to supporting companies in the green transition process. The Cassa Rurale ed Artigiana dell’Agro Pontino will bring its 14 agencies, with 99 employees and 2,700 members, within the BCC of Rome.
“The aggregation operation – added Longhi – is one real union with a bank with solid fundamentals and has always been administered and managed with great rigor, correctness and foresight. For both banks it constitutes a wide-ranging project, which tends to strengthen the presence of the Bcc Iccrea Group and the credit cooperation in an area of great commercial potential and a deep-rooted mutualistic tradition”.
The Assembly then took another important decision. It has in fact renewed the corporate offices for the next three years, expanding – following the merger – the composition of the Board of Directors to 13 members and approving the list of directors and auditors presented by the President Maurizio Longhi.
For what concern Financial statements, as of December 31, 2023 the expanded collection of the Capitoline Bank stands at 15.4 billion euros (+7.8% on 2022), demonstrating how BCC Roma, albeit in a context of particularly high competition, continues to be an attractive and confidence for savers.
The trend of the jobsincreased by 1.5% for a total stock of almost 10.2 billion.
L’Net income it reached 95.4 million euros and was mainly allocated to strengthening the company’s assets and also for charitable and mutual purposes to renew support for the civic and social fabric of the territories to which it belongs.
Own funds at 31 December 2023 reached the amount of 940 million. The bank’s CET1 is equal to 19.3%, significantly higher than the required prudential requirements.
AND credit quality improved further: the relationship between impaired loans and loans net of provisions fell from 1.2% in 2022 to 0.3%, with coverage of bad debts increased from 92.4% to 99.5%.
For the General Director of BCC Rome Gilberto Cesandri“it’s about data that once again confirms our solidity and which continue to reward our way of banking, close to the areas where we operate. Numbers, which are the result of great team work carried out by our 1,500 employees, women and men committed daily alongside our communities”.
As regards social policy and solidarity and support interventions for the territories, the 27 local committees of the Bank’s members, which distribute the so-called “social budget” in the areas of competence, disbursed almost 2 million euros in 2023 as a non-repayable grant for charitable activities for parishes, voluntary bodies and associations and for promotional events, for a total of 2,300 initiatives supported. Over the last 20 years, the non-repayable social budget disbursed has been a total of 32 million euros, supporting approximately 38 thousand interventions in the reference territories.
BCC Roma, the largest cooperative credit bank in Italy, is today present in Lazio, Abruzzo, Veneto and Molise, for a total of over 500 municipalities and 182 agencies. It has 424 thousand customers and 52 thousand members, grown by 14.6% compared to 2022. Over the last 30 years the shareholder structure has increased almost 18 times.
The Assembly was also an opportunity to remember the 70 years since the foundation of the Bank, founded in a peripheral area of the capital in 1954. Around 8 thousand people took part in the event in presence and by proxy, including the Venetian members, in video link from the Alta Forum Auditorium in Campodarsego.