Intesa breaks out of Italy in CIB

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Intesa breaks out of Italy in CIB

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Mauro Micillo, chief of IMI corporate & investment banking division, Intesa Sanpaolo

Despite an overwhelmingly Italian business in retail, Intesa Sanpaolo has stepped up its share of corporate and investment banking revenue outside the country. In its global growth markets, divisional chief Mauro Micillo says the firm is here to stay.

Halfway through his conversation with Euromoney, Mauro Micillo, head of Intesa Sanpaolo’s investment banking division, asks us to guess how much of its client business comes from outside Italy.

This is the EU’s biggest bank by market capitalization after BNP Paribas and Banco Santander, with a balance sheet of almost €1 trillion. Its valuation is higher than BNPP and Santander, and its market cap is bigger than banks that are larger by assets, Deutsche Bank or Societe Generale. Yet that is mainly thanks to having by far the biggest share of Italian retail banking – including large fee-generative businesses in asset management and wealth management. It is far less known as an international player.

We think about it. Corporate and investment banking is naturally a more international business than retail. The division, for which Intesa Sanpaolo retains the old IMI brand – harking back to an investment bank that played a vital role in Italy’s post-war reconstruction – had an annual operating income of around €4 billion over the past two years.

We have had a great expansion of international activities over the past 10 years, but we did it without compromising our cost/income ratio
Mauro Micillo, Intesa Sanpaolo

But the group is still best known as an Italian national champion.

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EMEA editor
Dominic O’Neill is EMEA editor. He joined Euromoney in 2007 to cover emerging markets, focusing on central and eastern Europe, Middle East and Africa, and later on Latin America. Based in London, he has covered developed market banking since 2015.
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