The popular fear was that UniCredit would struggle to absorb growing credit losses from central and eastern Europe – and need more capital. Its price to tangible book value of 0.4 times said as much. Yet the Italian bank’s 38 per cent slump in net profit to €4bn last year proved less severe than expected, in spite of an almost 50 per cent leap in bad loan provisions to €3.7bn.

Not all countries in the region are economic basket cases. UniCredit’s pre-tax profit there rose by 14.5 per cent, in spite of turmoil in Hungary, Ukraine and the Baltic states. The bank reckons it has the wherewithal to tough it out if times worsen further. Bad loan charges in central and eastern Europe would have to increase seven times from last year’s levels to wipe out all profits from the region.