Tirana, 8 June 2007 - At its last meeting, the Supervisory Board of the Bank of Albania, held on 6 June 2006, decided to: Approve the transfer of the controlling package of 80% shares of the American Bank of Albania over to the Group of Intesa Sanpaolo S.p.A. Italy.

The new shareholder of the American Bank of Albania, Intesa Sanpaolo, is an Italian leader of European scale whose aim is to create an operator of the primary importance, able to come up with valuable products for its customers as well as to compete effectively in the financial and banking sector. The Intesa Sanpaolo Group is present in 48 countries. The Italian network of Intesa Sanpaolo is made up of 5,500 branches spread out throughout Italy, serving about 12 million customer. Moreover, its network of banks in 13 Central and Eastern European countries is made up 1,650 branches, serving about 7.7 million customers.

With the approval of this transfer, the equity structure of the American Bank of Albania is owned by the Albanian-American Enterprise Fund and the Intesa Sanpaolo Group S.p.A. in the following rations:

i. AAEF, has 3,000,000 shares that represent 20 percent of the equity of the Bank.

ii. Intesa Sanpaolo, has 12,000,000 shares that represent 80 percent of the equity of the Bank.

As regards the supervision efect, the American Bank of Albania will be included in the Intesa Sanpaolo Group of Italy.