This could also prove to be deadly with 4 market share

Rather than throwing BNL in a price war, Jean-Laurent Bonnafé favours the renovation of the network and products.

You took the helm of BNL in April. That is that surprised you

Frankly, we did not have bad surprise since our arrival at the head of the Bank. If this is perhaps an aging it infrastructure requires us to invest heavily and which, in fact, limits our synergies in this area. But, overall, we improve our cost synergies and, especially, of income because the capabilities of pooling between BNL and settlements of BNP Paribas in Italy proved larger than expected. Fault of investment and because of the uncertainties weighing on its future, BNL has lost ground on competition the past two years. Its acquisition by BNP Paribas ended this difficult period. The teams are now ready to do battle. They have shown with the highly successful sale of our first new product performance guaranteed called "four four". The collection amounted to EUR 600 million in three weeks, against 450 million provided in eight weeks. It gives us confidence in the future. In this context, we welcome the recruitment of Stefano Calderano, from Intesa, to lead the retail bank and the Bank of BNL.

The departures 2.200 and 3.000 mobilities announced are unlikely to interfere with this dynamic

Not because it was within the framework of an agreement with the social partners with both elements already provided by BNL in its modernization plan and a redeployment by the arrival of BNP Paribas. We have signed an agreement concerning BNL with the unions. On the 2,200 planned post deletions, there is, in fact, 1,000 retirements favored by the pyramid and 1,200 departures via the ABI (Italian Banking Association) Fund. They will be offset by the recruitment of 900 commercial in three years and important training programs.

The mobility project is related to the reorganization of the network, which will increase from 12 regions in 5 to restore autonomy to managers of agency effectiveness. These mobilities may concern personnel of BNL as other entities of BNP Paribas.

Do you expect to lower your prices to regain customers

Non. This is not our way to enter a market. This could also prove to be deadly with 4 market share. We consider that, even more than the price, the challenge of the Italian market is the quality of service. If we want to win new customers, we must first improve the satisfaction of existing customers. The strength of BNL is to have a network in touch throughout the Italian territory. We will invest to rely on the high capacity of production and innovation of BNP Paribas.

In the new landscape, a network of 800 branches suffice or would you proceed with acquisitions

800 agencies BNL easily correspond to almost double in another network. BNL is banks one. It covers the whole and its agencies are generally much larger than the average. We will review the aesthetics and the Organization of the agencies and create a hundred more, particularly in the Northeast. First, this should be sufficient for current customers and attract new ones. Furthermore, ongoing mergers can promote the redistribution of the corporate client. Finally, other acquisitions are not news. For the time being, we have enough to do with the network as we want to renovate.