Italy’s biggest bank mistakenly releases earnings data

MILAN – Italy’s largest bank, UniCredit, has released earnings figures two weeks early after acknowledging that it had erroneously disclosed some data.

The bank said Tuesday that a table of preliminary and incomplete earnings was uploaded onto its website inadvertently and emailed erroneously to investors and financial analysts Monday. The errors were corrected by removing the data and informing recipients of the data of the mistake.

UniCredit said the figures show operating income fell 4 per cent to 4.6 billion euros ($5.4 billion), while net interest income dropped 3.5 per cent to 2.5 billion euros and net fees and commissions rose 4.2 per cent to 1.6 billion euros.

Shares in the bank dropped slightly before recovering to be up 1.5 per cent at 17.38 euros.

Full earnings are due for release on Nov. 7.