BPU Banca, Assumed a New Name, “Unione Di Banche Italiane Società Cooperativa Per Azioni” (A Joint Stock Co-Operative Company)
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2006 Social Report The value of meeting On 1st April 2007 the merger of Banca Lombarda e Piemontese into Banche Popolari Unite Scpa, which gave rise to the new UBI Banca banking group, became effective. On that same date the Parent Bank, BPU Banca, assumed a new name, “Unione di Banche Italiane Società cooperativa per azioni” (a joint stock co-operative company). 2006 Social Report The value of meeting 1 2006 Social Report This year we are publishing the fourth edition of the Social Report of the BPU Banca Group, which we are presenting to the Ordinary General Shareholders’ Meeting together with the consolidated financial statements and the individual company financial statements for 2006. It has now become an established tradition, a tangible sign of a desire to continue to share, with our registered shareholders above all, the orientation of social responsibility that has always characterised us as a co-operative ‘popular’ bank. It is less than four years ago, it was 1st July 2003, when BPU Banca, the largest Italian ‘popular’ bank and the seventh domestic banking group, was formed from the alliance of the Banca Popolare di Bergamo-CV Group and the Banca Popolare Commercio e Industria Group. At BPU Banca we strove to maintain and strengthen our values and the ties of our banks with the community, the fruit of over a hundred years of tradition, in observance of the universal principles in which we believe and which we also support with our participation in the Global Compact. In just a few years we have drawn up three ambitious industrial plans and have always exceeded the targets we set each time. We have built a solid, profitable group, oriented towards the generation of durable and substantial profits through our capacity to create value for all our stakeholders employing a “broad mutual” philosophy. For our registered shareholders who have constantly put their trust in us, spurring us on to always do better, and for all our shareholders, we seek to guarantee stable and profitable investment prospects. For our staff, our truly distinguishing feature, we are committed to offering opportunities for professional improvement in line with their aptitudes and aspirations and with respect to all their diversities. For our customers, whose business relationships with us are our greatest asset, on which the bank lives, we guarantee that we will continue to search for excellence in products and services. For life in the community, in all its many local forms, we contribute with a sense of citizenship, intrinsic to our nature, which commits us in our business activities not only to always pay attention to emerging needs and to disadvantaged groups especially, but also to intense activity in the fields of social welfare, culture, charity and sport. The principle of sustainability has also translated into increasingly greater attention to the environment, by controlling and reducing our direct impacts and by developing financial services oriented towards promoting investments for savings and the protection of the environment on the part of citizens and firms. We seek to give an increasingly more transparent account of these aspects of our activity, which go beyond the operating and financial dimension, by publishing a complete and detailed Group Social Report. With it we submit to the judgement firstly of our registered shareholders and then of public opinion, the value of our identity and of our contribution, according to our characterising mission, to the common good. 2 We have worked over the years to improve our social report both in terms of content and form. In order to underline its value as an instrument of dialogue and comparison we have given it, for the first time, a title in this edition, The value of meeting. The aim is to improve the quality of relations with our stakeholders and we asked a young and creative high school graduate from the Carrara Academy to interpret the various sections with images of people. What sprang from this is a gallery of faces whose gazes we meet as we read the document. They are faces which look us in the eye, almost as if to establish a personal relationship with us as happens in our work everyday with colleagues and customers, or when we meet with different experiences from which great projects for growth are born. In various parts of the report we give an account of the passage from BPU Banca to UBI Banca, which took effect on 1st April 2007, through the merger with the Banca Lombarda e Piemontese Group , a group that is very similar to us in its corporate philosophy and organisational structure and with which we share values and ideals, a common identity and the same careful attention to the communities in which it operates. It is an extraordinary new growth project which we wanted to carry out to become even more solid and profitable for our registered and non registered shareholders, in order to better safeguard the independence, the roots and the “localist” vocation of our banks, which work to support the economic and social development of communities and to be even more competitive on markets and further improve the effectiveness and quality of our products and services. In inviting you to read and to carefully consider this social report in order to grasp the daily and intense commitment which our staff make to achieve our mission, I wish to thank and express particular appreciation to our general manager, Dott. Alfredo Gusmini, who after more than 40 years of activity, has “passed on the baton”, with the birth of UBI Banca, to Dott. Victor Massiah, the former General Manager of Banca Lombarda e Piemontese. Since 2001, the year of the first edition of the Social Report of Banca Popolare di Bergamo-Credito Varesino, Dott. Alfredo Gusmini has always been passionately and continuously involved, with his many duties, even in the preparation of this document bringing, to it his sensitivity and valuable experience in the social responsibility programmes of the Bank and the Group. Looking to the future, we intend to increase and strengthen the social responsibility orientation of our bank, so that the achievement of increasingly ambitious results will be accompanied by a growing tendency to create value throughout our society, both that of today and tomorrow. This is our guarantee that the new important operational and financial goals that we have set ourselves are sustainable. Emilio Zanetti Chairman of BPU Banca 3 2006 Social Report METHODOLOGICAL NOTES This Social Report has been prepared in compliance with the 2006 “G3” sustainability reporting guidelines, defined by the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) and it is in line with the guide lines issued by the Gruppo di Studio per il Bilancio Sociale (GBS - Italian study group for the social report) and the “Modello di redazione del Bilancio Sociale per il settore del credito” (Model for the preparation of social reports in the banking sector) published by the ABI (Italian Banking Association) in 2001 and updated in 2006 with “Il Rendiconto agli Stakeholder – Una guida per le Banche (“Reporting to Stakeholders – A guide for Banks”). Levels of application of the GRI Reporting Framework – G3 2006 BPU Banca The GRI/G3 level of application of the BPU Group is B+. The level of application reported gives a clear indication of the elements of the reporting framework used in the preparation of this report. The framework has three levels of application (C, B and A). The reporting criteria for each level reflect the increasing level of application or treatment of the GRI reporting framework: B is the intermediate reporting level. For each level, those organisations that have obtained an assurance from an external entity may add a “plus” sign (+) to the level. See the index of GRI indicators for the reporting indicator specifications and the independent auditors report for the external assurance. The structure and contents of this report have been adapted to fit the identity and specific requirements of the BPU Banca Group. As concerns the quantitative indicators, the scope of the report covers all Group member companies, where not indicated otherwise. In order to increase reliability to the maximum, we have given priority in the information reported to the inclusion of directly measurable values, limiting recourse to estimates as much as possible, which are nevertheless based on the best information available or on sample information. We report the following with regard to the identification of stakeholders considered in the social report: 4 • where not otherwise specified, figures for personnel relate to the workforce of the whole Group; • the shareholders, registered and unregistered, reported are those of the Parent Bank; the registered shareholders are those in the shareholders’ register, while figures for unregistered shareholders are based on dividend payments; • the customers we have reported on are those of the Parent Bank and of the Network Banks; in reality some of the product companies (e.g. in the insurance sector) have their own customers, but they represent a very small number compared to the total; • by the “community” we mean all those persons, entities and associations to which the social activities of the Parent Bank, the Network Banks and the foundations of the group are addressed; • where not indicated otherwise, the measurements of environmental impact refer to the Parent Bank and to the Network Banks. The operating and financial data for the social report are taken from the consolidated financial statements. Taken together the two documents furnish stakeholders with full information on the performance of the Group and share general principles of clarity, truth and accuracy, prudence and pro rata accrual accounting on a going concern basis. The social report is also based on an established body of specific reporting standards based on national and international best practices designed to make it easy for each stakeholder to identify and understand the information that concerns them: • Responsibility To report, in terms of the categories identified in the social report, the effects of our decisions on all the internal and external stakeholders, with particular regard to addressing their different legitimate interests.