Last Wednesday, NRBC Rome held its first event of 2019.
The very well attended evening was hosted by the Dutch Embassy’s Deputy Ambassador, Mrs. Dewi van de Weerd, its Head of the Economic Department, Claudia Pieterse, and the NRBC President, Angela Mannaerts.
Evert-Jan Breman, General Manager of Rabobank in Italy, held a presentation with the title “Italian banks: A political or an asset problem?” and Paolo Pizzoli, Senior Economist of ING in Italy, gave a presentation entitled “Italy: Flirting with recession”. The presentations were followed by a lively discussion with the participants, including representatives of other Embassies and of Italian banks.
It was fascinating to look at this sector through the eyes of a banker and a macro-economist. Some of the end conclusions were that the view on the Italian banking system and its economy should not be too pessimistic: the amount of non-performing loans held by Italian banks has been substantially decreased in the last years and Italy is still, after Germany, the second largest manufacturing country of Europe.
We warmly thank Messrs. Breman and Pizzoli for their interesting lectures and Mrs. Dewi van de Weerd, Mrs. Claudia Pieterse and their colleagues of the Embassy for their hospitality.