Venture capital and Italian institutions: Francesco Cerruti's point

Francesco Cerruti is general director of the Italian Tech Alliance, the association that brings together the main Italian venture capital operators, including both the main investors and the startups most validated by the market.
The main objectives of the Italian Tech Alliance are the improvement of the rules that regulate the operations of the sector's players and the broadening of the investor base.
In Italy the volumes invested in startups and innovative companies are in fact lower than what happens in other countries in the Eurozone, above all due to the lack of certain classes of investors, such as pension funds, insurance funds and large corporations, which elsewhere instead invest in a massive.
read also Italian Tech Alliance: Francesco Cerruti and the DDL changes to the industrial property code What is the state of investments in innovation in Italy after the 2021 and 2022 boom? The last few years have been the backdrop to growth, both in terms of attention and investments, but after the great boom of 2021 and 2022 there was a phase of decline that continued until the first months of 2023.
However, the market is restarting and in the third quarter of this year venture capital investments in Italy reached 302 million euros.
In Italy we are witnessing a completely mirror situation – although with a few months' delay – compared to what happened in other European countries where there was a peak in 2020 and 2021 with a large decline the following year and a subsequent restart in 2023.
Definitely positive signals also come from the ever-increasing interest on the part of international investors who accounted for around 30% of the investments raised and who are starting to look at the Italian market with interest for a very simple reason: being less developed, it has a much greater margin for growth.
With the same potential, in Italy there are fewer competitors and more space to explore the many possibilities that a still peripheral market offers.
The Centemero Law for the promotion and development of start-ups arrived after a decline in most economic and statistical indicators: will it succeed in its aim of creating even more favorable conditions for investing in start-ups? The proposal from the Honorable Centemero is certainly positive because it aims to modernize the regulation by guiding the legislator.
The current rules are now obsolete and in some cases not suitable for managing the complexity of the market, which has been the subject of a positive evolution, both in terms of the increase in investments and the number of subjects involved.
In parallel with Centemero's proposal, Italian Tech Alliance is working in a very constructive and collaborative manner with the Ministry of Industries and Made in Italy to modernize the consolidated law on startups: a 2012 regulation that must necessarily be updated.
The hope is that in the coming months we will be able to arrive at the presentation of an update of the consolidated text, through a decree within which Centemero's proposals can find full citizenship.
read also Italian Tech Alliance, announces the new president Giuseppe Donvito Has the Italian Tech Alliance submitted to the Government eight proposals for measures to support the Italian innovation ecosystem? Which should take priority and why? It is certainly necessary to review the regulations regarding tax breaks.
In fact, currently a private investor who co-invests with CDP Venture Capital cannot have access to the benefits by virtue of rules that reflect a reality that has stopped in 2012 and which does not take into account the possibility of public-private interventions and consequently the evolution of our Cassa Depositi and Loans.
We then need to reorganize the R&D tax credit mechanism because to date it is not accessible to many startups that are not yet on the market, resulting in it being largely uncollectible.
It is therefore important to provide exceptions or in any case particular regulations specifically for startups.
Furthermore, regulatory activity would be important to attract institutional investors such as social security funds and insurance funds which in other countries are among the protagonists of investments in innovation and in Italy are practically absent.