A warning to reindustrialise the country

43% of the takeover bids carried out in the last 10 years on Italian companies traded on the stock exchange have been sponsored by foreign capital, with the transfer of control into non-national hands, resulting, over time, in fewer job opportunities for our compatriots. All this is happening right under our noses, in spite of the size of private savings and a variety of SMEs in the processing and services sector which, although they are not always growing in double-digit turnover, have a consistently positive progression and a truly interesting capacity to generate margins and cash. Many of these listed companies now have a free cash flow yield of over 15-20%, which means that the cash generated can repay the entire market value of the company in a few years, making the undervaluation expressed on the stock markets obvious. These are not isolated cases, but a very large selection of dynamic companies with technical and service skills that qualify and enliven our economy.

And yet, we are not succeeding in bringing about a direct and constructive encounter between capital and national business projects with high potential, which should find its natural synthesis on the stock markets to support the growth of excellent companies, fostering sector consolidation in continuity of governance. On the contrary, there is a growing number of Italian SMEs with excellent fundamentals that are mortified on the stock markets, ending up prey to the discounted values of foreign operators who take over. All this is happening amidst the general apathy of many managers of our savings, bound by compliance rules that force them to direct investments in large caps that are often non-domestic.

As a financial community, we have been shouting this alarm for years, but apart from a few interventions such as the Pir, the Capital Bill or the long-awaited Cdp fund of funds, which are certainly opportune but certainly not decisive, the general focus is on the latest Bot placement that went overbooked, or on the banks that close their balance sheets with record margins. We forget that 'the payer' to the treasury, or the intermediary bank, is always, directly or indirectly, the Italian company, whose shares are deserted and whose stories, even very significant ones, do not arouse widespread interest. We could and should channel tens of billions of national savings to support investments for the development of Italian production assets, upgrading their technology and developing niche intellectual properties, seizing the opportunity to share their value and profitability over time, leading to an induced employment and welfare for our entire community. We certainly do not lack the tools, we have everything: savings, skills, companies and regulated markets.

American companies, thanks to round multiples, can finance their development and technological progress with capital increases placed without compromising their governance and American sensibilities. After all, the ratio of US stock market capitalisation to American GDP makes us pale if we compare it with the ratio of the overall capitalisation of the Milan stock exchange to our national GDP.

How can we compete in a global world if our companies trade at multiples on their margins that are a third of those faced by American or Indian companies operating in the same industry? It goes without saying that our excellences become prey to non-domestic groups benefiting from the excess equity subscribed by investors, among whom we also find managers who direct domestic savings. It is paradoxical that our savings, by subscribing to the capital of foreign companies at very substantial multiples on their fundamentals, contribute to endowing them with liquidity useful for shopping around even Italian companies at low multiples, transferring their governance abroad.