UniCredit, dialogue with the territories: “Energy, digital and key markets”

Milan, 5 July 2025 – "The bank must put itself in listening mode", even more so in a scenario of instability. This is how Remo Taricani, deputy head of Italy UniCredit , kicks off the Forum of the territories which aims to tell what the Lombardy advisory board in Piazza Gae Aulenti, composed of subjects from the business and banking world, has gathered, precisely, by "listening" to the territory, with the aim of defining problems and solutions.

“This territory is an accelerator of our strategy at the national level. After three years of supporting businesses with a 35 billion plan, we can and want to accelerate now. We will finance key discontinuities: energy competitiveness, digital transition and, above all, we will exploit our uniqueness: we are a bank with strong roots in Italy, but we connect 1 4 European markets that represent two-thirds of our exports,” explains Taricani.

As Marco Bortoletti, regional manager Lombardia UniCredit, points out: “We are going through a period of great discontinuity. The most realistic observation is that it is no longer a temporary and limited transition, but a situation of stable volatility. As a consequence, in order to survive, companies have experienced the need to become or remain flexible and adaptable, ready to respond to changes in the times and markets”. An ability to “resist” that Lombard companies have been able to embody: “Not only have they reacted, but they have also done so better than the country system and for some parameters even better than the European reference cluster”, he adds.

Internationalization, green and digital transition, productive polycentrism and investment in human capital and business culture. These are the challenges, listed by Bortoletti. In the background, however, a constant word: restlessness. According to Antonio Calabrò, president of the advisory board, it is precisely this component that can be transformed into an “advantage for Italian genius”, which has its roots in the “relationship between the sense of beauty and productivity”.

The director of QN-Il Giorno, Il Resto del Carlino and La Nazione Agnese Pin also took part in the debate to broaden the vision to the global geopolitical and geoeconomic scenario: “The use of dialectics, of language, is changing. We are witnessing a cold war, the commercial one, which is played with words. The issue is not the stability of governments, but the stability of a vision, in a scenario in which it is impossible to make predictions. This uncertainty is the real worrying fact, the one that makes us anxious”, she underlines.

Manuela d'Onofrio , head of group investment strategy at UniCredit, then takes the floor to outline the evolution of the markets: "Since 2008, the US economy has grown at a rate double or triple that of Italy, a gap attributable to two factors: restrictive fiscal policies in Europe versus expansionary American ones, and a rapid bank rescue plan in the US that allowed a faster recovery. Added to this is the greater propensity for risk of American companies, especially technological ones, favored by the ability to attract great minds". But today, d'Onofrio hopes, crises can be the engine of EU integration . Two round tables follow. Marco Taisch, professor at the Polytechnic of Milan, Valentina Cogliati, President and CEO of the Elemaster Group, Alberto Dossi, President of the Sapio Group and Costantino Vaia, CEO of the Casalasco Group, discussed the "three i's: innovation, internationalization, intelligence".

Davide Dattoli, founder and executive chairman of Talent Garden, Cecilia Perego, CFO of PegPerego, Gianmario Verona, president of Fondazione Human Technopole and professor at Bocconi University, Gianluigi Viscardi, honorary president of Cosberg, spoke about “business culture for a new leadership” . The chairman of UniCredit, Pietro Carlo Padoan , drew the conclusions of the conference: “The global system faces multiple crises and the absence of governance. In this scenario, technological innovation and democracy are seen as keys to mitigate risks and promote inclusion. Europe finds itself in a system in crisis , with a failure of collective action due to the preference for local rather than common decisions”.