After spending just over a year as property head of public sector player Cassa depositi e prestiti (CDP), former Beni Stabili CEO Aldo Mazzocco has accepted one of the biggest challenges in Italian real estate, taking on the chief executive role at Generali Real Estate, which manages €27 bn of assets worldwide.
'The prospect of joining Generali was too tempting to say no. You could say that we've been watching one another for a while,' Mazzocco told Italian financial daily Il Sole 24 Ore.
Running the real estate division of CDP, the Italian investment agency, has been a rare excursion into the public sector for largely private-money property man Mazzocco.
The majority shareholder of the joint-stock company CDP is the Italian Ministry of Economy and Finance, with a mandate to invest about €160 bn of public money. Over the past year, Mazzocco had been charged with directing CDP's €4 bn of property investments as part of its 2016-2020 strategic plan.
'Since joining CDP, I have received job offers every couple of days,' Mazzocco told Il Sole 24 Ore. 'Up until now, I hadn't taken any of them seriously, as the challenge of reorganising CDP's real estate division was particularly close to my heart. Now, over a year since taking office, I have the satisfaction of having really got the process underway.'
Shift into property
After spending nine years as CEO of railway transport operator Compagnia Ferroviaria Italiana in the 1990s, Mazzocco joined Beni Stabili in 2001, marking a shift to the world of real estate and arguably the beginning of a love affair.
The 14 years under Mazzocco's guidance were game-changing ones for Beni Stabili, including the entry of Foncière des Régions as a majority shareholder in 2007 and its conversion to the SIIQ (REIT) regime at the start of January 2011.
These days, Beni Stabili is one of Italy's leading real estate investors with total assets of €3.9 bn, mostly focused on office investment (including development) in the north and centre of the country. Listed on the Milan and Paris stock exchanges, as part of the Foncière des Régions group, it forms part of a bigger pan-European player which owns and manages an €18 bn portfolio located in urban areas in France, Germany and Italy.
Mazzocco left Beni Stabili in October 2015 to join CDP, but maintained the presidency of InvestiRE for another three months, an asset management firm which incorporated Polaris Real Estate and Beni Stabili's asset management arm, Beni Stabili Gestioni in December 2014 to create a firm with €7 bn of Italian assets under management.
It's not clear why Generali took so long to appoint a successor to former CEO Christian Delaire, who left Generali Real Estate in March 2016. Francesco Benvenuti, Generali's COO, has been standing in as interim CEO.
Now, both Generali and Mazzocco will hope they finally have their man to steer the Trieste-based business, which currently owns assets in 13 countries worldwide, into its third century.
