Borrower of the year
Italy
IF YOU WANT to talk to Fabrizio Ghisellini on the phone, be prepared to be quick and to the point. As the head of international funding at the Italian treasury in Rome, Ghisellini is responsible for $15 billion to $20 billion of issuance a year.
And all that debt, plus the country’s vast domestic issuance programme, which has about €1,300 billion ($1,200 billion) outstanding, is managed by a team of just 10 people.
Ghisellini laughs when asked how he copes with the heavy workload. “We are severely understaffed,” he says. “Maybe it’s because you need a high sense of social responsibility to work here. Or maybe no-one else wants to do it.” Either way, it is clear that he loves his job.
Italy stands out not just as a top-quality European sovereign borrower but as a strong international borrowing presence because of its frequent issuance and the wide range of instruments it uses. Marco Figus, a senior investment banker in fixed income at Lehman Brothers who has been covering Italy for 20 years, says: “Whether it is in innovative deals such as ABS from real estate, social security or the lottery, or global bonds in dollars, yen, euros or Swiss francs, it is difficult to find a borrower over a consistent period that can match Italy.