Milano Capitali, here we are again. We've talked about the instruments of the TUF reform, possible changes in the budget, the strategic fund, moving from instruments to management, to asset management, which must be increasingly directed towards the growth of the capital market with various figures and responsibilities. With us still is the associate editor-in-chief Gabriele Capolino. Gabriele, welcome back.
Let's welcome the president of ANF, the National Association of Financial Advisors, here in the studio with us, Luigi Conte. Welcome back.
Also welcome Diego Ciappetti, head of MNA at Banca Investis. Welcome back. We're seeing online Alessandra Gritti, co-founder, vice chair, CEO of Tamburi Investment Partners. Welcome back Alessandra.
Welcome to you all. Thank you. Good morning.
I also want to greet Walter Ricciotti, co-founder of Quadrivio Group, joining us online. Good morning. Let's see if we can hear him... Alright, let's check the connection again. We'll come back to him while they fix the link. So we were talking about wealth management, private capital and especially the great issue of generational transition, because that's where there's a risk of losing the connection. Gabriele,
I'd say the panel that closes Milan Capitals today is the classic last but not least, because Milan being the capital also means the capital of money management, the money of small and medium but also large families. And as we heard earlier from the figure that Simone Strocchi mentioned, there are at least 300 billion within households that are, let's say, available for investment. Moreover, in a society that is moving towards progressive aging and therefore with low birth rates like Italy's, there will be a generational transition in the coming years, from the Boomers who are starting to get older to the new generations, and this raises a series of issues. Will they continue, not continue, prefer to sell, or rely on managers? All these things in turn trigger a series of mechanisms and protagonists that offer alternatives to these realities. I wanted to start from the analysis of the current moment, because there is another piece missing from the puzzle we are putting together about the capital market, namely the attractiveness of the Italian market at this moment. Let me start with you, Ciappetti.
Yes, certainly the Italian market is attractive by definition because it is the second largest manufacturing economy in Europe after Germany and among the top 10 economies in the world depending on how you measure it, so it's attractive by definition, always on the radar of international capital and institutional funds. But we need to understand what attractive means, because attractive also means having interesting dossiers to present to this capital and enabling the investor to invest according to international standards. From this point of view, a lot has been done, and the role of investment banks continues to be very important in this sense, and I must say that today there is a good climate from this point of view because the public sector, in terms of stability, is helping, and we'll try to land in '26 following in the footsteps of '24, which was a very good year for investments.
Luigi Conte, president of ANASF, financial advisors have an important role and responsibility in terms of accompanying companies. So we're trying to understand the reliability of the moment, the narrowing spread, the upgrades for Italy, the work being done by various entities, operators, international and national banks... What results does this produce when you interact, when advisors exchange opinions with companies? Is it possible to take this step forward for the development of the capital market?
I think it must be done. We have reached the point where this enormous mass of wealth that transfers from generation to generation is not just financial wealth, but also cultural wealth. Pay attention to this aspect, if we talk about business, it's fundamental because the real central element is defining how to transfer the cultural heritage of companies between generations. Speaking of this, in recent years sensitivity has increased greatly, also in relation to one aspect: often the Italian family corresponds to the company, meaning there is a direct consonance between family and business that heavily conditions this matter. It conditions the fact that within the family nucleus, when multiple generations talk to each other and we have companies, families comparing even four or five generations at the same time. When there is this alchemy, sensitivity to the issue likely increases. We advisors have the duty and responsibility, as was correctly said, to help this transfer of values, considering a series of aspects. Here comes the issue of complexity: regulatory aspects that are always hypertrophic at times, functional aspects because obviously the mechanisms for implementing certain processes change, but even more so aspects related to the asset dimension of companies and families, which is increasingly an enlarged dimension. It's a dimension no longer concentrated in a single business but tends to open its perspective to multiple businesses that need to be calibrated differently based on their quality and structure.
Alessandra Gritti, the observatory, the voice of businesses must be heard, as Luigi Conte says. The moment, as testified by Banca Investis' Diego Ciappetti, we've been saying in all panels, is the right one. But is there awareness on the part of companies? There's a theme of awareness, and then we'll also address the issue of generational transition. What does it bring us back to?
There has been a huge transition in Italy that we should be proud of. For years we talked about debt-ridden companies; today we talk about companies with capital, and that's a significant shift that has taken many years but today sees a very strong opening. Regarding attractiveness, there's still one missing piece for our Italian companies. We wrote a book about it, edited with you, which is the ability to build a network. Medium and small Italian companies are still too autonomous, in the negative sense of the term, not in the proactive one. So if they don't learn to build a system, which doesn't necessarily mean selling, but means being open to joint ventures, innovation, from digital transformation to artificial intelligence and innovation in general, this could be the limitation of our companies going forward. They have shown strong resilience but must necessarily structure themselves. If these facts don't change, it's very difficult, as was said at the beginning of this intervention, for professionals and investors to easily look at investing equity in these companies. So the need to build a system is on the table. The second dimension is the factor at this moment: I would divide the world into two, healthy companies with very low leverage ratios, and high leverage is a phenomenon of the last two years with the rise in interest rates. So in this sense, attractiveness must find healthy, capitalized companies, not indebted ones. Let's take a further step, Gabriele, that of generational transition. Generational transition because often from what was the founder's idea, faced with a market, the awareness in the generational transition perhaps something gets lost,
But it also changes, I think. Our guests can help us understand the trend they observe within the generations that either should take up the value baton and the command baton of their respective companies, or don't intend to. Because another thesis that is spreading is that the EGM, as a set of small realities, is perhaps too fragmented a representation to interest an eventual institutional investor. A bit like Alessandra Gritti was just saying: watch out, because if you don't network but go it alone with your nice, well-functioning but tiny company, after a few years you discover that the interest of professional capital isn't there, not because you're doing badly, but because you're too small, you lack critical mass. So I think this is also the theme of building a system. And I think it also belongs somewhat to the will of these new generations that you perceive as the first mechanism of transmission between capital and owning families.
Certainly. Also because building a system today could be simpler in technical terms, because innovation allows you to define the issue of proximity in a different way than before. So this is an aspect that the new generations have grasped, in my opinion. They just need to actually implement the consequent actions and do so consciously of a dimension of role that they probably don't yet have in the companies.
Diego, from your point of view, do you also perceive this? When you said earlier that there need to be interesting dossiers, does that mean there's a need to present things that are interesting for investors of a certain level?
Yes, this is also the ambition we have as a group, which tries to combine two pillars: one is wealth management, the other is advanced financial services that involve making available to the client all the tools that can be, as mentioned before, capital markets, i.e., IPO, but also M&A which then translates into various instruments. These can also be, for example, hybrid debt instruments with funds that can intervene in particular situations of the company. And I must say this year was a surprise for us to have closed four debt advisory operations exclusively in this area. What we see is that within the broader context of wealth management, succession and the issue of generational transition are inserted, and it becomes a path taken together with the entrepreneur in the broader framework of managing his or her assets: coming to market and bringing the company along a path that in recent years is becoming longer in terms of time, with a gestation period of 8 to 10 months. At the end of this path, one understands and prepares to go public dressed in the best possible way, with standards that are then welcomed on the other side.
Let's also go to Dr. Gritti, because when it comes to generational transition, in her many interventions she always explains a bit about the genius of the young. So perhaps this linear transition, this continuity, isn't exactly the picture that emerges.
Well said, Gabriele, before me. To be a bit clearer, I define young people today as much more secular than the past regarding belonging to the family business. What does that mean? First of all, and this is a theme also covered in the previous panel with the MP's appeal, these new young people have a different mental openness. They have often studied abroad, so they have the advantage that they consider the company's good as a true asset and not as their own child, as it was for the founders or the generations that preceded them. On the other hand, precisely because they are more secular, not all are eager to take up the baton. Whereas once it was almost taken for granted that the father would pass the company to the children, today some children raise their hands because they don't want to take on responsibilities, they don't think they want the kind of life their parents often had. And this is one of the fundamental aspects. If they do want to do it, they want to do it differently. So here we need to work, and interlocutors like us have often worked on these transitions, to ensure that we don't end up having to say that companies must be sold, because that would be a mistake. Instead, it requires openness, so we come back to talking about introducing managerial figures who don't necessarily belong to the family. In this sense, young people with their openness are helping the older generations to consider these aspects. So an external CEO is much better than a feud within the family where there isn't necessarily a suitable figure. On the other hand, as said before, and returning to the theme of wealth management, different potentialities also develop within the family. Strocchi mentioned the amount of capital in family offices. The family office figure is one that is ferry the generational transition to ensure that roles that once didn't exist are found within the family. So this doesn't necessarily mean abdicating to a transition that must necessarily result in a sale, but rather maintaining assets that are managed differently within the family, identifying professional figures who help establish family offices, which are becoming a very important reality. What is the advantage? As said before, the advantage is that there is a very important cascade effect because the structured family, even if we have single family offices but this is developing in multi-family offices, manages to pass on values of sustainability, intended as the sustainability of the business, long-term thinking, and thus also regarding markets. And I come to today's topic: clearly being able to channel these savings and asset management into markets that we hope will be more evolved. This is something the new generations do, and in this sense they remain attached to the companies that have created this wealth, but find new roles that are not necessarily entrepreneurial. So we can introduce almost an additional step: intercepting new trends and new solutions.
Conte, regarding what Dr. Gritti was saying, how do you position yourselves?
I think this passage is significant in relation to the connection between the thinking of these new generations, who observe the company from another perspective, and innovation in a broad sense. Because innovation brings new trends and innovative tools that can be combined so that the transition elevates the level of the business. I believe the great difference lies precisely in the cultural dimension. As Dr. Gritti correctly said, there is the founder model, which is the constitutive model of the company, and there is the prospective model of the innovator, which is the new generation observing the same element through a perspective that becomes absolutely divergent, a perspective that brings together various elements and substantiates the evolutionary form of the company in all its values.
I also wanted to hear from Banca Investis on this: offering, attracting young people. Beyond the figure, because as Dr. Gritti explained, the CEO doesn't necessarily have to be the son.
