The mystery of the British still attractive to capitals. Useful lessons

Encouraging signals on the financial markets for Italy thanks to the operation carried out by Atlantia. Britain and Ireland fail to maintain lead in buyout due to Brexit, says Pwc. Made in Italy attracts, but watch out for the precedent of Cinven

If Italy’s public debt worries the financial markets again, its entrepreneurial and productive fabric is increasingly a hunting ground for foreign investors. In fact, the country is growing in terms of attractiveness as shown by the data for the first quarter of 2023 compared to last year, which was also extraordinary. Suffice it to say that in 2022 Blackstone’s operation with Atlantia-Benetton was one of the largest concluded in Europe, where the United Kingdom has always been at the top of the ranking of the most attractive countries for private equity and this for historical reasons of market characteristics and size (more propensity for public companies). What is interesting happened, as emerges from the latest Pwc report on the sector at European level, is that for the first time France has overtaken the United Kingdom and Ireland in the number of so-called “buy out” transactions, i.e. those that modify the very structure of the company and lead to a change in the ownership structure, just as happened when Blackstone entered Atlantia and this was transformed into Mundys, with the American shareholder acquiring a minority stake but visible. These types of operations can perhaps be identified as the true thermometer of business attractiveness for a country. Well, in 2022 France scored 542 for a total value of 51 billion euros, but only the deals of Atlantia in Italy and Milaway (logistics) in the Netherlands combined beat the total of French ones (64 billion).