With over 800 attendees and 22 speakers the 2017 edition of the NPL meeting confirms the high interest of investors and market players. High level speakers such as CEOs of Bper, Banco BPM, Quaestio and Banca IFIS. Data from the Special edition of the NPL Market Watch was unveiled.
Venice, September 15, 2017– Today in Venice the sixth edition of the International NPL Meeting was held; this being the most important conference in Italy on the topic of Non-Performing Loans. About 800 people among which investment funds, banks, servicers and other market professionals from all over the world, took part in the day, chock full of discussions and topics linked to the continuously moving NPL market.
“Both the pipeline and the volume of deals undergoing closing in 2017, which will hit the 100 billion mark point to a turning point,” says Giovanni Bossi, Banca IFIS’s CEO. “A few years ago, bad loans were so heavy that they were challenging the survival of the banking system, thus reducing its stability. The opposite is happening today, and the problem of bad loans seems to be partially resolved, with international markets looking at Italian banks a lot differently than before. ”
The Sixth Edition, entitled “The Marketplace – A Toolkit for the NPL Market“, wanted to explore the market from the point of view of the tools needed, the so-called “toolbox”, which players need for the profitable management of NPL.
Specifically, after the kickoff of the macroeconomic scenario and credit supply by the IMF, the EBA and ECB explained their positions in the NPL sector as market regulators; The ECB also analyzed risks for the stability of the financial system and the different reactions to the NPL problem, with the options to overcome the failure of market self-regulation. What followed were the main investment funds (Cerberus, Algebris and Bayview), and the banks (Banco BPM and UBI) discussed opportunities and challenges that the market presents in buying and selling taking into account regulatory variables.
Over the course of the day, other market players like Arrow Global, Zenith, Lindorff, Gextra and Aquileia Capital presented their points of view. Banks also featured a CEO roundtable where the CEOs outlined their firms’ strategies: Banco BPM (Giuseppe Castagna), BPER (Alessandro Vandelli), Quaestio (Paolo Petrignani), Banca IFIS (Giovanni Bossi).
Lastly, we saw a lively round table with HR specialists , executive search firms and banks with the participation of companies such as Egon Zehnder, Spencer Stuart and Unicredit, who highlighted how the NPLs market is emerging in Italy , underscoring an evident gap between demand and supply in terms of professional profiles.
A surprise intervention was that of the motivational speaker Pierluigi Collina, who was able to create the link between rigor and creativity in the football environment as well as in the game between operators and regulators in the NPL world.
During the NPL Meeting, a special edition of the “Market Watch NPL – The Italian Scenario” was also presented, which revealed that the approximately 71 billion euros of additional non-performing loans that will become available by 2017, reaching a record figure of 104 billion euros of distressed loans traded on the Italian market, and which will have an estimated market value of around 14 .4 billion euros.
The market is, however, becoming broader and more efficient and prices change depending on the type of asset: the category of mixed asset portfolios is the one with the largest growth, with 58 billion – out of a total of 71 – monopolizing almost all deals in the pipeline. Secured assets are those that are growing and have a higher price, with an estimated 35% average.
The analysis of the NPL Market Watch also shows that net non-performing loans (65.8 billion euros) are now at the same level as in 2012, but gross non-performing loans are 39% higher than those in the same period. In June, and more accentuated in July, gross and net bank debt suffered a significant drop as a result of NPL portfolio sales, more significant write-downs, and more diligent management by banks
Also an important player in the NPL market are more and more servicers: 16 acquisitions per year show that availing oneself of a servicers platform is a prerequisite for investors to operate in the Italian market.
