On May 18-21, UniCredit virtually hosted the Italian Investment Conference - jointly organised with our strategic partner Kepler Cheuvreux - and the High Yield & Leveraged Finance Conference, bringing together around 100 corporates and 500 institutional investors, to discuss current business, strategy
and the outlook for the rest of the year.
For the second year in a row the Italian Investment Conference took place remotely, breaking all records: nearly 500 international institutional investors, 86 % from outside Italy, had the opportunity to virtually meet around 100 corporates and for the first time also Financial Institutions, representing 70% of the capitalisation of the Italian Stock Exchange. In addition to the focus on Equity Capital Markets, this year's conference featured once again a dedicated day to Debt Capital Markets, with our annual High Yield & Leveraged Finance Conference.
During the four day conference, UniCredit also hosted more than 1,500 One-to-Ones and restricted meetings and 4 high profile keynote sessions with distinguished senior speakers addressing key economic and business topics.
"The Italian Investment Conference is THE investment conference to access the Capital Markets in Italy, as demonstrated by another year of record attendance from both issuers and investors. The role of capital markets to finance the recovery plans makes this year's edition even more crucial. In fact, the IIC is an excellent platform for international investors to have direct access to senior management of the backbone of the real economy which will drive the implementation of the recovery plan and the transformation of the Country", said Richard Burton, Head of CIB, UniCredit.
The Keynote Session of the first day, "Next Generation EU: toward a new Italy?", focused on how the European package is set to relaunch the EU's economy, as well as boost the Italian recovery, given Italy is one of the main beneficiaries of the fund. It was opened by Richard Burton (Head of CIB, UniCredit) and was hosted by Andrea Cabrini (Managing Director of Class CNBC) who moderated an interesting debate between Pier Carlo Padoan (Chairman, UniCredit), Erik F. Nielsen (Group Chief Economist, UniCredit) and Alessandro Rivera (Director General, Italian Ministry of Economy and Finance).
The presentation "Pandemic, Regime Change and Beyond" held on the second day by Christopher Potts (Head of Economics & Strategy Research, Kepler Cheuvreux), gave an overview of the changes in economic policy caused by the pandemic and the macroeconomic outlook for Europe.
Financial Institutions joined the Conference for the first time this year, attending the keynote session held on the third day focused on a very crucial and current theme: "Digital payments: a serious threat to incumbent financial institutions?". The dynamic dialogue among Luca Corsini (Co-Head of GTB) and Giorgio Gobbi (Head of the Milan Regional Branch, Milan Fintech Innovation Hub, Banca D'Italia) was introduced by Guy Laffineur (Deputy Head of CIB, Global Head of FIG, UniCredit).
The four-day conference closed with the keynote session on "New scenarios and solutions in raising equity capital: a game-changer in sight?", focused on how equity-raising is fundamental due to the challenges corporates are facing caused by the Covid-19 pandemic and on how it is possible to bridge the mid-sized corporates to capital markets, not having only the stock exchange as the final destination. The keynote session was opened by Goffredo Guizzardi (Co-Head of Global Financing & Advisory, UniCredit) and saw a debate between Raffaele Jerusalmi (CEO, Italian Stock Exchange) and Alfredo Maria De Falco (Deputy Head of CIB, Heady of CIB Italy).
The strong positive response and continuously increasing participation confirms the relevance of the Italian Investment Conference as a "must-attend" event to exchange ideas and views among specialists.
UniCredit is the partner of choice for Equity Capital Markets and Debt Capital Markets transactions as highlighted in the credentials here below.
