The European financial integration “must continue to be another common Italian-Spanish objective,” emphasized Ambassador Giuseppe Buccino during the meeting of fund managers and representatives of companies from both countries held at his official residence on April 21.
With more similarities than differences, the Italian and Spanish private equity sectors moved 8.5 billion and 7 billion euros respectively in 2025 in the private equity sector. On the other hand, regarding venture capital, 1.9 billion was invested in Spain compared to 1.3 billion in Italy.
These figures show a gap that, however, will also be reduced thanks to the new European legislative framework, as the ambassador expressed before emphasizing that Spain and Italy must continue to join forces to promote the common goal of European financial integration.
According to Buccino, the effort must first aim at the full realization of a common market for savings and investments, which allows the high volume of savings in Europe to generate wealth on the same continent, as indicated by a statement from the Italian Embassy.
Equally important, he stated, is to achieve a single market for energy and electricity, which allows addressing various energy shocks through greater integration in the production, interconnection, and distribution of electricity, better leveraging Europe’s comparative advantages over other countries.
Another essential measure, the ambassador concluded, is the “articulation of a common and permanent financing mechanism for the supply of genuinely European public goods,” as sectors such as defense, energy security, or strategic innovation, which generate evident cross-border externalities, cannot be efficiently addressed solely by relying on national budgets.
The event, organized in collaboration with the head of the Investment Attraction Office of the ICE Agency in Madrid, was attended by the institutional presence of the mayor of Madrid, José Luis Martínez-Almeida, and the deputy governor of the Bank of Spain, Soledad Núñez.
In addition to the institutional representatives of the associations Spaincap and AIFI, the president of the CdA of Rothschild & Co Spain, Íñigo Fernández de Mesa; the general secretary and of the Council of Banco Santander, Jaime Pérez Renovales; the president of the Council of Iberdrola Renovables Internacional, José Oriol; the director of Repsol Corporate Venturing, Gema García; the director of Telefónica-Wayra, Paloma Castellano; and the senior advisor of Apollo, Konstantin Sajonia-Coburgo were present.
In the context of a rapidly evolving international environment, the ambassador emphasized the importance of further strengthening Italian-Spanish economic relations, due to the “extraordinary closeness, economic and cultural, between the two countries, which makes Italy and Spain represent a natural destination for funds wishing to start or reinforce their internationalization process, even in third country markets.”
The meeting —in which an overview of the Italian private equity market and the important legal and tax reforms it has made to attract more foreign investors was offered— aimed to be a stimulus for bilateral synergies at the level of Spanish investments in Italy, in addition to mutual co-investments and in third countries.
