UniCredit and the EIB Group, which includes the European Investment Bank (EIB) and the European Investment Fund (EIF), have signed a new agreement to provide financing to Italian small and medium-sized enterprises and mid-caps.
The operation is supported by the European Fund for Strategic Investments (EFSI), the main pillar of the Investment Plan for Europe. The two banking groups communicate it.
In collaboration with the EIB group, UniCredit has finalised, with UniCredit Bank Ag as arranger, a new synthetic securitization of a portfolio of approximately €2 billion under the Arts (Asset Risk Transfer Sharing) programme, in line with the new UniCredit Unlocked plan.
“EIF will guarantee the mezzanine tranche of a portfolio of loans already granted by UniCredit to small and medium-sized Italian enterprises – specifies the note – counter-guaranteed by the EIB. The capital released from the €2 billion securitized portfolio will then be used to disburse €720 million of new loans to support new projects by Italian SMEs. The agreement is part of the broader framework of collaboration launched by UniCredit and the EIB to support SMEs in Italy. In the last six years, the EIB resources that UniCredit has allocated to companies in Italy amount to over 4 billion euros, with almost 6.000 projects financed to date.
