La Bella Italia's embryonic economic miracle!

The Scandinavian Love Shack in Ayia Napa, my fave Cypriot beach resort near Larnaca is not exactly a venue designed for deep philosophical introspection. So I was taken aback when my new Italian friend Giovanni asked me for my country's national motto. He said "La Bella Italia? Mama, pasta, discoteca!". I answered "Pakistan? Unity, faith, discipline", which so bizarrely did not reflect the realities of life there that I might well have borrowed the Brit quip for King Farouk's Egypt "maleesh, baksheesh, hasheesh". My friends who have visited Italy will agree that it is heaven on earth, unless their purse was snatched by a dude in a speeding Vespa in Napoli or they were lured into a tourist trap trattoria by Bangladeshi tout near the Colosseum. Rome bewitches you with its sheer historical grandeur, from the imperial ruins of its temples in the forums Via Sacra to the Renaissance magnificence of the Piazza Namona and Fontana di Trivi where I made sure that Manju and my twins all threw coins in the fountain so we return to Rome again and again all our lives.

Florence is a work of art cast in stone from Michelangelo's David on the Piazza della Signoria to the Medici Chapels built by the clan who owned the greatest international bank of the medieval world and gifted the Vatican with three Popes and France with two Queens, both evil. Venice is exquisite beyond words despite the tourists and vaporettos on San Marco. I can only repeat the Andalusian proverb "the most unfortunate of men is he who is born blind in Granada''. The only good thing I have to say for Milan is that trains run on time and it is only a mere half an hour from the sublime Lake Como.

The best thing about Naples, Italy's Karachi, is its nearness to the Isle of Capri and the haunted ruins of Pompey amid the guilty silhouette of Mount Vesuvius whose volcanic ash buried this Roman party town in August 26th in the year 79AD, when mule trader Vespasian whacked Nero to become Emperor of Rome. I love la Bella Italia because its regions - Liguria, Lombardia, Tuscana, Veneto, Emilia Romagna, Sicilia, Calabria, Sardinia are so deliciously different in their dialects, food, landscape, beverages, women, music, art and architecture. Italy is really just a geographical expression 170 years after Cavour and Garibaldi united it in one nation.

Italy has so many amazing world class private family owned companies in its Mittelstand that I track the pre-IPO pipeline in Milan like a hawk. After all, this is the land that gave birth to Gucci, Ferrari, Lamborghini, Benetton, Bulgari, Armani, Brioni and Prada, which even the Devil wears! Rotors and components for the EV sector are on my due diligence list.

Despite PM Georgia Meloni's (how can you trust a lady who admires Mussolini and founds a Party called Fratelli d'Italia (or Brothers of Italy) but then Il duce ha sempre ragione!) windfall bank profit tax and the horrible COVID trauma, Italy has outperformed Germany, France and Spain in the post 2020 recovery. Italy has a bad rap in Arab high finance due to memories of Silvio Caesar bunga bunga style revolving door coalitions and the Club Med debt crisis in 2012 and the antics of the Five Star Movement founded by a clown/politician. Yet beneath this veneer, the Italian economy is on a roll. Meloni is a fiscal hawk and has embraced Mario Draghi's budget caps. The Italian bond spread to German Bunds has plunged to 2-year lows though I concede that the debt/GDP ratio is high at 144%. EU pandemic funds are a bonanza as Rome also embraces structural reforms. Italy is also a new hub for high tech manufacturing and robotics as well as sports cars, luxury goods and fashion/accessories. So let me make the ultimate heretical forecast. I am convinced that la Bella Italia will beat Germany as a money maker for GCC investors in the next five years. Buona fortuna amici!