Alessandro Profumo, the UniCredit chief executive, on Thursday unveiled the Italian bank’s new three-year business strategy in Vienna – and what better place to do so than a grand Hapsburg palace. After all, the main thrust of his plan is further aggressive expansion in central and eastern Europe where UniCredit envisages opening 1,300 new branches and adding 11,500 employees to its workforce.

UniCredit was one of the first large west European banks to move into what once constituted the old Hapsburg empire. Since its acquisition of Poland’s Pekao bank in 1999, it has expanded in Russia, Hungary, Turkey and Kazakhstan. It has also been growing simultaneously in western Europe through its acquisition of Germany’s HVB.