“Worried by the increase in inflation?” So ran the heading of recent advertisements in Italy's daily newspapers. The product on offer: Mediobanca Inflazione Italiana 2013/2019, bonds issued by Italy's leading investment bank aimed to entice the country's small savers. The times are gone that Mediobanca was an exclusive and secretive Milanese institution that dealt only with Italy's industrial and financial elite.
Three years ago, Mediobanca employed a leading advertising agency to help a retail sale of fixed-interest bonds. It later spoke proudly about how the campaign had boosted brand awareness, a notion that would have puzzled the business leaders who once stepped through the gates of the discreet palazzo alongside La Scala theatre. And they might have turned their noses up at the idea that such an institution should become involved in retail banking.
