Andrea Orcel

Andrea Orcel (born May 14, 1963) is CEO of UniCredit.

Andrea Orcel was born on May 14, 1963, in Rome, Italy.

His father ran a small leasing company and his mother worked for the United Nations.

Orcel attended the Lycée français Chateaubriand in Rome for secondary school, at his mother's request, so he could learn French in addition to his native Italian.

Orcel attended the University of Rome, Sapienza, majoring in economics and commerce.

While a university student Orcel reportedly skipped class, as attendance was optional, and went backpacking in South America before returning to take his final exams.

He has stated that a vacation to the United States when he was 18 moved him to go into banking.

He graduated summa cum laude with an undergraduate thesis on hostile takeovers.

He went on to attend the INSEAD business school in Fontainebleau, France.

He attended the INSEAD business school in Paris before working at Goldman Sachs and Boston Consulting Group during the late 1980s.

Upon his graduation, Orcel was hired by American investment bank Goldman Sachs in 1988, aged 25, to work in their fixed income business in London.

A year later he left the firm to work as a consultant at Boston Consulting Group from 1989 to 1992 in their strategy consulting practice in Paris, France.

In 1992, he was hired by Merrill Lynch & Co. where he spent the succeeding twenty years in their mergers and acquisitions (M&A) department in London.

In 1992, he was asked to join Merrill Lynch & Co. in their Financial Institutions Group (FIG) in London.

Orcel orchestrated the $25 billion (€21.2 billion) merger of Italian banking groups, Credito Italiano and UniCredito to form banking conglomerate UniCredit in 1998.

UniCredito had originally planned to go public but the stock market valuation proposed by bankers at a rival investment bank made UniCredito "unhappy".

Orcel called the bank and offered to explore the possibility of a merger with a comparable company as the initial deal was going through; he brought them to Merrill Lynch a week later.

The merger made UniCredit the largest bank in Italy.

The following year he was the advisor on the $13 billion (€11 billion) merger of Banco Bilbao Vizcaya and Argentaria to create BBVA.

BBVA became the second largest bank in Spain after the merger.

Orcel served as the head of the Global FIG team from 2003 to 2007, succeeding Joseph Willit.

In 2004, Orcel initiated Spanish bank Santander's acquisition of British bank Abbey National, expanding the bank's operations into the United Kingdom in a deal valued at $15.6 billion (£13.8 billion).

He was tapped by the Royal Bank of Scotland Group (RBS) in 2007 to advise on a $55 billion (£49 billion) acquisition of ABN Amro.

The deal was orchestrated by Orcel after he brought in Fortis and Santander to execute a three-way consortium bid for ABN Amro.

At the time, the bid set a record for the largest merger or acquisition in financial services history.

For the acquisition, Merrill Lynch received $12 million (£7.5 million) in advisory fees.

Months later, the oncoming financial crisis surfaced, quickly reducing the capital buffers of banks all over the world, causing major damage to RBS and forcing the UK Government to seize control of it.

The Institutional Investor labeled Orcel "one of the most controversial bankers of the financial crisis".

In November 2008, Orcel's team at Merrill Lynch valued the Italian bank Banca Antonveneta at $10 billion (€9 billion), advising Monte dei Paschi (MPS) to acquire it from Santander for the same amount.

He left Merrill Lynch in 2012 to join Swiss investment bank UBS at the behest of its CEO, Sergio Ermotti.

From 2012 to 2018, Orcel endured the 2013 Libor trading scandal, led a corporate restructuring, downsized the bank, and increased up M&A activity.

In 2021, the board of UniCredit has named Andrea Orcel as the new CEO that will take the place of Jean Pierre Mustier.

Orcel is a controversial, but acclaimed, figure in European business and international banking.

He has been called one of the most successful investment bankers of his generation.

Orcel has also been routinely criticized for his abrasive management style, overworking subordinates, and being hyper-competitive.

He previously served as the president of UBS Investment Bank from November 2014 to September 2018.

He was poised to take on the role of Chief Executive of Banco Santander from September 2018 to January 2019; however, the job offer was later withdrawn which resulted in him taking legal action against Santander.

In December 2021 a judge awarded him €68m in compensation, including €10m for moral damages.

Since early 2020, Orcel has been linked to taking over as CEO at a variety of financial institutions including starting his own boutique investment bank, before taking the role of Group CEO at UniCredit.

Born in Rome, Italy, Orcel attended the University of Rome, Sapienza, graduating with a degree in economics and commerce.