* New CEO to illustrate his vision at key committee meeting
* No signs that Chairman Rampl will leave - CEO to press
* CEO says investment bank, retail bank equally important
* Future of Chmn Rampl at the bank remains unclear
By Arno Schuetze and Gianluca Semeraro
FRANKFURT/MILAN, Nov 3 (Reuters) - New boss Federico Ghizzoni is to discuss his vision for UniCredit at a key committee meeting later on Wednesday that may be decisive for Chairman Dieter Rampl's future at Italy's top bank.
UniCredit is undergoing a management shake-up after ousting former Chief Executive Officer Alessandro Profumo in September.
Sergio Ermotti, UniCredit's investment banking chief, also handed in his notice last week, raising the prospect that Rampl, a supporter of Ermotti and of UniCredit's playing a big role in investment banking, would also leave soon.
"I have no signals that he will leave us," Ghizzoni was quoted as saying in an interview with German financial daily Handelsblatt on Wednesday. "My relationship with him is excellent," he added.
However, the future of Rampl at the bank appeared unclear.
Two sources close to UniCredit's German unit HVB, which Profumo acquired in 2005 in a move that turned it into a top European player, said Rampl -- a German who used to run HVB -- was determined to leave.
"Rampl will step down. Not today and maybe not this week. But probably at the next supervisory board meeting or the one after that," said one of the sources.
One Italian source told Reuters that talk of Rampl's resignation was rubbish. But another Italian source said that a decision about Rampl's future could be held ahead of the next shareholder meeting in the spring.
NEW STRATEGY
Ghizzoni has vowed to strengthen UniCredit's retail system and focus on emerging Europe in countries where UniCredit is a market leader, but he denied that this will be done at the cost of disregarding the investment banking business.
"It is wrong to talk about a rivalry of investment banking and retail banking. Both businesses are equally important," Ghizzoni told the paper.
Scaling back the investment bank, which revolves around HVB, would hit the German operations of UniCredit. Italian shareholders of UniCredit, mostly non-profit foundations with strong ties to local business, are on the other hand keen that the bank focuses on lending to small and mid-sized Italian companies.
Italian bank Mediobanca and three large Italian foundations control around 16 percent of UniCredit. Key foreign investors -- a diverse group that includes the central bank of Lybia, investment fund BlackRock and German insurer Allianz -- own more than 18 percent in total.
Asked by Handelsblatt if he will focus less on international and more on Italian business, Ghizzoni said: "I deny that 100 percent. I only said that we have a couple of problems in Italy and that the bank is not profitable enough here." (Writing by Lisa Jucca and Arno Schuetze, additional reporting by Kristia Kraemer and Stefano Bernabei; Editing by Michael Shields)