UBI Banca Group

and to thereby guarantee greater stability to the liability structure of its balance sheet
in a market context still far from “normality”;
• The Group was allotted financing of €6 billion in the auction held on 21 st December
and a further €6 billion in the second operation on 29 th February 2012 (with value date
1 st March);
• it took action designed on the one hand to contain lending, especially to the “large
corporate” segment, and on the other hand to consolidate and increase funding from
customers, which represents 80% of total direct funding for the UBI Banca Group. The
above was performed with a view to further safeguarding the structural balance
between funding and lending business with customers, with consequent effects on the
consolidated liquidity position.
An examination of balance sheet items at the end of 2011 shows that the net interbank debt of
the Group rose to -€3.6 billion from -€2.3 billion in December 2010, after reaching -€0.6
billion in June (the lowest level in the last two years).
Analysis of items with a residual maturity of less than three months also shows a net balance
calculated net of auctions with the central bank of +€2.1 billion (+€0.3 billion in December
2010).
As shown in the table, the quarterly performance of the items was quite varied during 2011.
After a significant improvement in the net balance in the second quarter, made possible,
amongst other things, by the results of institutional issuances 1 – accompanied also by the
elimination of the exposure to central banks – the Group began in the summer to participate
in weekly auctions held by the Eurosystem for increasingly larger amounts.
Weekly operations with the central bank were supplemented in October with financing of one
billion euro with a maturity of one year (maturity 1 st November 2012).
The subsequent participation in December in the first of the two LTROs for €6 billion allowed
the Group to completely eliminate its outstanding debt (€4 billion including the one-year one
billion euro loan just mentioned), replacing it and supplementing it with funds available on a
stable basis for three years.
In detail, loans to banks as at 31 st December 2011 totalled €6.2 billion, almost twice the
amount recorded in the previous December. The change that occurred reflects an increase in
lending to banks other than the central bank (up by €3.1 billion to €5.4 billion), while the sum
on the centralised account held with the central bank for compulsory reserve requirements,
was basically unchanged at €0.7 billion.
In terms of types of lending, the increase in interbank lending was composed as follows:
‐ an increase in current accounts and deposits (+€1.4 billion, of which +€0.8 billion in the
fourth quarter alone);
‐ new investments of €1.1 billion in debt instruments issued by banks made towards the end
of the year (securities eligible for refinancing used to increase the pool of assets eligible for
refinancing with the ECB);
‐ increased financing (+€0.6 billion), above all in the form of reverse repurchase agreements
(+€0.5 billion), used for the acquisition of securities eligible for refinancing. After significant
growth at the beginning of the year, in relation to the need to temporarily supplement the
“collateral pool” held with the ECB, the latter were reduced in the third quarter when a
second rating was obtained for the securitisation of B@nca 24-7 residential mortgages and
when eligibility was obtained for the securitisation of Banca Popolare di Bergamo
performing loans to SMEs.
1 See the previous section “funding policies” in this respect.
127