Italy is a key market for the Luxembourg financial centre, whether in the investment fund industry, corporate banking, wealth management, capital markets or insurance. Interest from the Italian financial community in the cross-border solutions and products that Luxembourg has to offer is as high as ever – a fact that was amply confirmed by the record attendance at the seminar Luxembourg for Finance organized in Milan.

Speaking to a floor of 350 professionals from the financial services industry, Luxembourg Minister of Finance Pierre Gramegna addressed the economic situation in Europe, financial stability and the competitiveness of European financials services. With an agreement on the securitization directive under Luxembourg’s EU Presidency, an important milestone was reached in the process to establish a Capital Markets Union, which aims to improve the efficiency of European capital markets, increase access by SMEs to capital market instruments and boost growth and investment in Europe.

Having signed on behalf of Luxembourg, just the today before, the OECD’s multilateral agreement on the automatic exchange of country-by-country reports, Minister Gramegna also underlined the global progress that has been achieved in matters of tax transparency and international taxation. Luxembourg has been at the forefront of this movement. Under the Luxembourg Presidency, an agreement on an EU directive on the automatic exchange of tax rulings was achieved in a record time. As Minister Gramegna highlighted, tax transparency has been a real opportunity for the Luxembourg financial centre to further develop its activities on the basis of its strong cross-border expertise.

Fabio Morvilli, President of the Italo-Luxembourg Chamber of Commerce, provided an overview of Luxembourg’s diversified and dynamic economy, ranging from financial services to ICT and high-tech industry, from the satellite and media industries to logistics and biotechnology.

Italy is also the 8th country in terms of the number of listings on the Luxembourg Stock Exchange, the global leader for international securities listings. 226 Italian issuers have listed nearly 1300 securities in Luxembourg to reach international investors.

Reaching European and global investors is also why the majority of Italy’s leading asset managers have established fund platforms in Luxembourg. Moreover, 64% of the more than 4000 foreign funds distributed in Italy are Luxembourg domiciled funds.

During the various panel sessions, experts discussed Luxembourg’s broad range of wealth management solutions, life insurance products as well as recent developments in UCITS and in the alternative investment space.