Giovanna Della Posta – CEO Invimit investment company of the Mef – the Saudi Arabian delegation has returned home. What is the outcome of this visit to Naples on which you have worked for over a year?
«We introduced them to a city they had never seen and where they had not even come as tourists: for them Italy is Milan for business and Rome for tourism. Now they also know Naples. They had heard things about our city that had triggered a prejudice. And getting them to come was the first step: Naples is not only not a dangerous place but there is also business, high-level and cutting-edge companies, they were enchanted by this entrepreneurial reality that they didn’t know about.”
How can we strengthen this channel with Saudi Arabia and establish industrial and commercial partnerships? What meaning could the invitation to Riyadh made by the Arabs to the Municipality and Region have?
«It is a courtesy invitation in the sense that they were already impressed by the presentation on robotics during the Region conference. As well as that of the Municipality on Apple and Bagnoli and again of Tarì. The invitation to Riyadh means: come now and see what we are. There is an invitation to see the arguments made. But the substance of this visit is – let me say – something else.”
That means?
«We have opened a door for Naples on the international investment market. The visit of the Saudi delegation will have great resonance: through the door we have opened, more investors may arrive, both from that part of the world and from others. The city has mobilized in an exceptional way in its entirety and with all its strength to best represent its possibilities. The substantial fact is the door that has been opened for Naples and our city’s response has been exceptional, but we need to work to create partnerships not only with the Saudis but with all investors. Of course, we started from the most courted in the world, we set the bar very high.”
So you’re saying it’s a long process to attract investments?
«We are the ones who have to transform those that were submitted to the Saudi delegation into interesting dossiers. The biggest work to do is this. The capital is there, but it must generate value and those who invest want certainties over the next few decades. I have made more than 200 presentations for an investment we have in Milan, and to date 45 investors have requested access to the documentation but they have investments worth 10 thousand billion euros and at the moment I can offer them an investment of 1 billion. I don’t have any Arabs in this audience, at least not yet, I would say, but this is to say that we need to work on all countries like this. Today the world of investments also revolves around Saudi Arabia and their presence here means putting Naples on the path of investors, and not waiting for investors to pass through here. We changed gear. For us it was very nice to hear the head of the Saudi Arabian delegation Kamel Almunajjed say: we should have made this visit to Naples sooner.”
So what should we do?
«The event we held in the city is an attraction factor for other investors. I’ll give you an example, in Italy we have stocks of foreign investments for 447 billion, but Germany has stocks for 1000 billion and France is second in this ranking. When we have a differential of 500 billion because these resources have gone elsewhere, we have no other option than to take on debt. We must be able to attract capital from other parts of the world, they are our real alternative to debt.”
What role can Naples have in this scenario? Does the “new paradigm”, a campaign by Il Mattino which shows that the South is the part of Italy with the highest growth, convince you?
«That the South is doing so much and giving excellent results is a true story, without a doubt it is. The theme is that we as the South try to recover the gap with the North just as the North in turn tries to catch up with the other economies of the world. We are on a moving train that is going faster and faster, just think about how competition has accelerated after Covid.”
Tell us something more about the South.
«For me, the South is a reserve of value for the country and as if we had deposits to discover, a potential that was only partially exploited but precisely for this reason we know that we still have it. And given the entire nation’s need to grow, this reserve of value is even more important, and must be extracted. To do this you need skills and on international markets it is not like in sport where the important thing is to participate, there you either win or lose. To win on the capital market you need to have strategic specialties. It is finance that makes the world go round because the idea or project can even be beautiful, but if it is not supported by finance it will always remain just an idea or project.”
In your opinion, would Naples and the South need a development agency?
«Invimit can do this job because with us the process closes when the bank transfer arrives. When we cashed out. We are not an agency but much more. We are financial intermediaries, we make resources flow to the country.”
In this sense, is the Napoli Fund within Invimit a vehicle for attracting resources and capital?
«We are work in progress, and it is the right vehicle for Naples. Let’s take – for example – Bagnoli: you put it in the Fund and then you set up the project, at that point you understand the profitability, how much money is needed and you go to the market to look for it. And then sell the shares of the non-Bagnoli Fund. Those who buy put in money because they then want their profitability. It is a completely different approach from the traditional one, especially when the stakes are high and significant capital is sought, resources that otherwise would not arrive.”
And what role would the public sector have at this point? It would even seem secondary in importance, wouldn’t it?
«Today the country resorts to debt because everyone asks for non-repayable contributions, first of all they ask the State. Instead I dream that we can create a Pnrr with public and private investment capital and not just contributions because the contribution is debt and we need to lower the debt quota and this is the work we are doing. Mayors can promote investments in their territory, but then when you sit at the table with investors you need to have a project, financial and legal structure that is consistent with what the capital market does. It is not the mayor who must find investors, but it is we who should support him as financial intermediaries. The event with the Saudis was the first step on a path towards the capital market and demonstrated that Naples and Campania have the right fundamentals, not just for the Saudis. Now we need to transform all this into a path, where the objective is clear, to find additional quality economic resources, and we started with the best in the world.”
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