UniCredit to free up capital from securitised €2 billion portfolio in support of Italian SMEs and Mid-caps guaranteed by the European Investment Bank and the European Investment Fund

UniCredit to free up capital from securitised €2 billion portfolio in support of Italian SMEs and Mid-caps guaranteed by the European Investment Bank and the European Investment Fund

  • EIB Group (EIB & EIF) guarantee to UniCredit to mobilise approximately €2 billion in support of Italian SMEs and Mid-caps.
  • The operation is supported by a guarantee from the European Fund for Strategic Investments (EFSI) — the main pillar of the Investment Plan for Europe.

(PRESS RELEASE) MILAN, 18-Jan-2022 — /EuropaWire/ — UniCredit (BIT: UCG), Italy’s only systemically important bank, and EIB Group, including the European Investment Bank (EIB), the lending arm of the European Union, and European Investment Fund (EIF), a Luxembourg based financial institution aimed at supporting Europe’s SMEs, have announced a new agreement that will provide funding meant for Italian small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and Mid-caps. The transaction is supported by the European Fund for Strategic Investments (EFSI), the core of the investment plan for Europe.

In cooperation with the EIB Group, UniCredit SPA has finalised, with UniCredit Bank AG acting as arranger a new synthetic securitisation of a portfolio amounting to approximately €2 billion under the ARTS (Asset Risk Transfer Sharing) programme and consistent with the new plan “UniCredit Unlocked”. The EIF will guarantee the mezzanine tranche of a portfolio of loans already granted by UniCredit to Italian small and medium enterprises, counter-guaranteed by the EIB.

The capital freed up from the securitised €2 billion portfolio is then used to deploy €720 million of new loans to support new projects carried out by Italian SMEs. The agreement signed is part of the broader framework of cooperation launched by UniCredit and the EIB to support SMEs in Italy. Over the last six years, UniCredit’s EIB resources for businesses in Italy have amounted to more than €4 billion, with nearly 6 000 projects financed to date.

In May 2021, UniCredit and the EIB signed an agreement to mobilise €2.5bn of investments in support of large and medium Italian businesses, helping them mitigate the economic consequences caused by the COVID-19 crisis. This was the first operation in Italy to be supported by the Pan-European Guarantee Fund (EGF), part of the €540 billion EU rescue package approved in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Backed by the EGF, the EIB provided a guarantee up to €750m (75%) of UniCredit’s new loan portfolio, which, thanks to additional finance and the complementarity mechanism, will activate €2.5 billion of investment.

Enquiries:

Media Relations
email: mediarelations@unicredit.eu

Investor Relations
email: InvestorRelations@unicredit.eu

SOURCE: UniCredit S.p.A.

MORE ON UNICREDIT, ETC.:

Follow EuropaWire on Google News
EDITOR'S PICK:

Comments are closed.