Milano, 01 July 2004

Today Banca Intesa and Calyon signed an agreement for Banca Intesa’s acquisition of 100% of bank, Crédit Agricole Indosuez Private Banking Italy, for a maximum price of €60 million.

The activity of the bank set up by Calyon for private banking in Italy last year comprises approximately €1.4 billion customer managed funds, 1,600 clients, 25 private bankers and 10 branches and will be added to Banca Intesa’s current private banking activity made up of around €28 billion customer managed funds, 22,000 clients, 350 private bankers and 60 branches.

The completion of the transaction is expected to take place in July, subject to the necessary approval.

As a result of the subsequent integration of these two activities Banca Intesa’s Private Bank will be set up.

The Private Bank will be a legally independent entity which will however be part of the Retail Division of Banca Intesa. This model of “a bank within a bank” will make it possible to take advantage both of focus and flexibility of a finalised structure and the synergies with the 2,000 branches of the Retail Division.

The 70 Private Bank branches will focus on added-value consultancy services which include asset management, hedge funds, private equity, corporate finance, fiscal and legal issues and real estate and art markets. As regards traditional banking services, the 2,000 Banca Intesa branches will be available for Private Bank clients through a preferential channel.

The selected Private Bank model will allow taking advantage of both the synergies deriving from available complementary distribution channels and those from interactions among different business areas and particularly from the close relationships of Gruppo Intesa with more than 800,000 Italian corporates.

This transaction further strengthens the strategic alliance between Gruppo Intesa and the Crédit Agricole Group and thus makes it possible to offer both Groups’ private clients the advantages arising from the combined specialised skills.