Intesa Sanpaolo CEO Carlo Messina has said a multi-million bet against his company is doomed to fail.

The world’s largest hedge-fund firm Bridgewater Associates, has mounted a reported $713 million wager against Italian financial stocks. Its biggest bet is calculated to be against Intesa Sanpaolo.

The short position, which aims to profit on a fall in the bank’s shares price were disclosed in regulatory filings and reported by Bloomberg on Friday.

Intesa Sanpaolo CEO Carlo Messina said that the Ray Dalio, who runs Bridgewater, was going to lose money on his bet.

“So I have to tell you that in my view they will lose significant opportunity to make money with these good Italian shares,” he told CNBC on the sidelines of the International Monetary Fund meetings in Washington D.C.

“And today after this news my share price is the only one that is positive and all the others negative so I hope that each day they can give this advice to the investors,” he added.

Messina claimed Intesa was in a strong position and pointed to the bank’s 920 billion euros ($1.09 trillion) of retail deposits that would benefit from any future era of rising interest rates.

Italian policymakers and EU officials have been trying to deal with the country’s fragile banking system, bogged down by non-performing loans (NPLs), for several years.

According to figures from the IMF (International Monetary Fund), Italy’s NPL levels stood at 356 billion euros at the end of June of last year, corresponding to 18 percent of total loans for Italian banks, equivalent to 20 percent of Italy’s GDP and one-third of the euro area total for NPLs.

Intesa Sanpaolo is Italy’s biggest retail bank. Divisions include traditional lending and deposits, corporate and investment banking, international subsidiary banks, asset management, private banking and insurance.