"Being pessimistic is getting too sexy." Among the protagonists of the Ambrosetti Forum in Cernobbio, which every year brings together the big names in international finance and politics on the shores of Lake Como, there is also Giovanni Bossi, 55 year old managing director of Banca IFIS, a Venetian institution specializing in business financing which saw its profits multiply from 18 to almost 100 million from 2010 to 2014 and whose stock on the Stock Exchange (it is listed in the Star segment) rose steadily and dizzyingly, achieving over 350% in 5 years.
Bossi joins the party of the new line dictated by the economist Nouriel Roubini: no more pessimism, China is not so close and there are signs of recovery. Just read them. “The acute phase of the crisis has passed and there is no shortage of positive points: for example, China is worrying, but at the same time its transition to a more sustainable economic model based on domestic demand has meant that it no longer asks for raw materials”.
Less industry, less infrastructure and therefore decline in commodity prices, from oil down. “The drop in raw materials – explains Bossi – affects the population like a tax cut. Especially for businesses, which have lower costs. And in my opinion, the decline is now stable: I don't imagine crude oil going back above 100 dollars, I really don't see the reason".
To help even more businesses there is the almost zeroing the cost of moneythanks to central bank intervention. “This too is becoming normal, no central bank right now would dare to raise interest rates substantially. The banks will struggle, but the real economy will benefit”. Also because the real economy is less and less supported by bank credit, despite the expansionary policies implemented by the ECB, which insists on Quantitative Easing.
“The problem is demographic: Europe is too old a continent in terms of average age, and this affects the ability of banks to provide credit: the elderly population, increasingly predominant, is for obvious reasons less inclined to medium-long term investments, which are instead in the hearts of the younger ones", argues the bank's CEO Venetian. But young people are few and many of them struggle to enter the job market. "GDP is not growing for this very reason: because the chosen incentives, while valid, do not work in this type of society: they would work in a younger society".
So it can immigration be a resource, as Roubini himself claimed? “The issue is delicate, we need to reflect on other realities such as the USA, which have been able to attract quality migratory flows. In Italy and in Europe today migrants are understood as a problem when they could become an opportunity”.
Returning to the banks, Bossi reviews the latest news in the sector. "There popular reform I think it is very important and goes in the right direction. The link with the territory - explains the CEO of Banca IFIS - is fundamental for popular institutions: therefore it still makes sense for small companies, much less for those that are larger and have spread nationwide. However, the reflection on the governance model can no longer be postponed”.
The reform has therefore been promoted and is only one of the elements that the government will have to change, to meet a scenario which according to Bossi will see credit institutions “much leaner in about ten years' time. Now the banks are hypertrophic and are distorting their nature: the bank in theory does collection and credit, and only marginally sells other products”.
Someone made a mistake and now in order not to leave the banks weighed down by non-performing loans, one thinks of bad banks. To the detriment of those who, like Banca IFIS, "did things right". “I am not in favor of the bad bank or at least – Bossi points out – I hope for a solution that is respectful of the more efficient banks and not too rewarding of the poorly managed ones. The path taken by the EU seems to me to be the right one, even if the logic of the market would dictate that whoever makes a mistake pays. Ultimately, the institutions should make capital increases, but the problem would be: who is subscribing to this increase?
Reflections that could be addressed to the premier Matteo Renzi, which just today makes its debut in the Cernobbio audience, “snubbed” last year for visiting a factory in the Brescia area. What to expect from this debut in the elite of the Ambrosetti Forum? “I expect the premier to stimulate companies to innovate and above all to address an entrepreneurial spirit. If we had entrepreneurial spirit, we would all be much richer”.
