The Hybrid Financial Instruments in Italy: A First Attempt to Define this Category

Ferdinando Bruno, Head of Italian Restructuring , UniCredit Bank AG, Milan Branch, (UniCredit Group)

In the Italian market – as well as in the European and international market – a new type of financial instrument has been often mentioned and used by financial and economic operators in recent years: the so-called “hybrid financial instrument”. This financial tool seems to have an open structure, enabling the financial engineers to create a financial solution different from equity and debt, collecting some features of both of them. As noted , in the last decade the international capital markets faced a trend much more than fast: the speed with which rules and actors of the international capital market are born, change and die makes really difficult the work of those who analyse this new financial structure which represents really an evolution, both for the financial actors and for the financial market, in terms of economic return and efficiency. The above is amplified by the so called “globalisation”, which – in the case of capital markets more than in other cases –clarifies the different approaches and interpretations among several jurisdictions regarding relevant matters and issues. Based on the above, there is a kind of natural attitude of the jurisdictions to follow foreign experiences in order to easily get the mentioned results, and specifically the experiences of those jurisdictions which – supported by high legal flexibility – represent an example for Italian doctrine and operators ready to copy new legal tools, often not available in Italy due to strict domestic rules.