Corrado Passera has restored order, and profits, to Banca Intesa's once-chaotic banking empire, but he faces a steep climb to enter Europe's top tier. When Corrado Passera ar- rived at Banca Intesa as chief executive two and a half years ago, Italy's big-gest bank was an unruly and inefficient organization with a performance to match. Cobbled together over two decades of mergers and amalgamations, the bank had three general managers (a position equivalent to chief operating officer) and 18 different domestic retail networks. It offered a bewildering array of 1,333 products, including no fewer than 48 types of checking account. Intesa's wholesale side bled red ink profusely from exposures to some of the decade's biggest corporate blowups. "The structure we inherited was something beyond comprehension," the 50-year-old executive recalls in an interview with Institutional Investor. "We seemed to be involved in every bankruptcy around the world — Enron, WorldCom, etc. It was a critical situation, but I knew we had the raw materials for a very strong bank."
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