Joint press release

Verona, Rome 12 October 2010

Following the agreement signed on 2 April this year and after having obtained the necessary authorizations, today Cattolica Assicurazioni and Iccrea Holding (the parent company of the Iccrea Co-operative Banking group) completed the agreement whereby Cattolica sells 49% of BCC Assicurazioni’s share capital to Iccrea Holding for the amount of € 10.3 million, equivalent to the proportional share of shareholders’ equity.

BCC Assicurazioni is the insurance company that implements the alliance between Cattolica Assicurazioni and Iccrea Holding in the non-life bancassurance segment. Within the cooperative banking industry BCC Assicurazione operates to provide co-operative credit banks (“Banche di Credito Cooperativo” – BCC) and rural banks (“Casse Rurali”- CR) with innovative products and services responding to the insurance cover requirements of households and businesses.

The CATTOLICA ASSICURAZIONI GROUP, a premier Italian insurance group, comprises Cattolica Assicurazioni, listed on the Milan stock exchange, and another 11 insurance companies.. The group ended the first half of 2010 with consolidated net income of €31 million and total premiums, including investment contracts, of € 2,893 million. As at 30 June 2010 the group’s agencies had reached a total of 1,441. Bank branches selling the group’s products numbered 5,430 while there were 1,199 financial advisors and 365 pension advisors.

Iccrea Holding SpA (whose capital is owned by co-operative credit banks (banche di credito cooperativo – BCC)) heads the Iccrea Banking Group, i.e. the group of companies that provides the BCC with a competitive overall offering for their 5 million customers and comprises the companies providing products and services for the operations of the BCC and and rural banks (casse rurali – CR) (Institutional segment) and their elective customers – SMEs (Corporate segment) and households (Retail segment). As at 30.6.2010, there were 426 co-operative credit banks (BCC) and rural banks (CR) active in Italy, with 4,265 branches. They were directly present in 2,658 municipalities and 98 provinces. In 549 municipalities they were the only bank. As at the same date the BCC-CR system had € 151 billion of direct funding (+6.8% YoY) while loans had topped € 131 billion (+9.4% YoY). Equity amounted to € 19.3 billion (+4.7% YoY).