Business Leaders in London Briefed on How the USD 40 Billion UAE–Italy Investment Framework Is Turning Commitments into Projects

The ‘Italy and the Middle East: Where Capital Meets Partnership’ event took place at Intesa Sanpaolo’s London branch, bringing together senior Italian and Emirati business leaders and institutional investors to discuss the progress of the investment framework of up to USD 40 billion announced during the February 2025 state visit to Italy by His Highness Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, UAE President.

The event brought together chief executives, chairs and chief financial officers of leading Italian industrial and family-owned groups, alongside senior representatives of the UAE’s sovereign and institutional investment community.

Speakers included Mauro Micillo, Chief of the IMI Corporate & Investment Banking Division at Intesa Sanpaolo; Alberto Mancuso, Head of the IMI CIB International Network; Andrea Bonomi, President of Investindustrial; Emma Marcegaglia, Chair and CEO of Marcegaglia Holding; Luca Molinari, Co-CEO Private Equity at Mubadala; and Veronica Squinzi, CEO of Mapei.

Delivering the keynote address as the Special Envoy of the Foreign Minister for Business and Philanthropy, H.E. Badr Jafar highlighted the depth of the relationship between the UAE and Italy, where non-oil bilateral trade has increased by 54 percent in four years, from EUR 9.5 billion in 2021 to EUR 14.7 billion in 2025. Italy was the UAE’s 16th-largest source of foreign investment in the past five years. Nearly five thousand Italian companies are now registered in the UAE, up 37 per cent in a single year. Then came two state visits in 11 months: the first by His Highness Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, UAE President, to Italy, and the first by the Italian head of state, His Excellency Sergio Mattarella, President of the Italian Republic, to the UAE.

His Excellency praised the Eni–Khazna data-center campus in Lombardy, approved by the European Commission in August, the EDGE–Leonardo joint venture and the Fincantieri–EDGE shipbuilding partnership in Abu Dhabi as evidence that “signatures are becoming sites”.

The UAE and Italy strengthened their relationship to a strategic partnership in 2023 .The fourth edition of Investopia Europe was held in Milan in May 2026, and the UAE and Italian governments signed a five-year memorandum on reciprocal industrial investment in Abu Dhabi in October 2026.

H.E. Jafar stressed that the next phase of the partnership would be built by family-owned enterprises. “The world is not short of capital. It is short of partners. Capital moves in seconds, but lasting partnerships are built over generations”. The UAE and Italy share a strong tradition of family business and a long-term approach to investment. Accordingly, the strongest ties between Italy and the UAE will be built not merely between funds and investment opportunities, but between Italian and Emirati business families, establishing partnerships designed to endure for generations.

His Excellency also highlighted the role of philanthropy as the “third builder” of durable partnerships, alongside government and business, noting that Intesa Sanpaolo itself traces its origins to a charitable group founded in Turin in 1563 and has committed €1.5 billion to fighting poverty and inequality. “Capital that only takes is tolerated. Capital that contributes is welcomed. In Italian, intesa means mutual understanding: an agreement founded on trust. It goes beyond a contract, preceding it and enduring beyond its terms. While capital can be transferred in seconds, an intesa takes time to build and can endure for generations.”