When The Banker interviewed Intesa Sanpaolo’s head of corporate and investment banking, Gaetano Miccichè, in Milan this July, he had just left a meeting in which his team had discussed the financing for a gas liquifier in the US. Intesa had agreed to finance and guarantee interest risk to the value of $800m in a deal involving a number of banks. Being able to provide this product to Intesa’s corporate clients is crucial, says Mr Miccichè.
Project and infrastructure finance has experienced peaks and troughs over the past few decades, thanks to floods and droughts of liquidity. The financial crisis mopped up liquidity and raised costs of intra-bank financing, keeping lenders away from large, long-term projects where returns do not materialise for several years.
