UniCredit CEO says confident about outcome of EU health check

UniCredit is confident it will pass a Europe-wide health check of banks without needing additional capital, its Chief Executive Federico Ghizzoni said on Monday.

"Up to now we maintain a good level of confidence that the process will be successfully completed," Ghizzoni told analysts in a conference call after Italy's biggest bank by assets reported first-quarter results.

He said criteria published by the European Banking Authority for a stress test of lenders were more favourable than expected on the real estate front, while the bank "was looking with attention" at the impact of its exposure to eastern Europe.

(Reporting by Silvia Aloisi and Gianluca Semeraro, editing by Isla Binnie)