Case Study: €28.2m Italian Real Estate Finance – Lake Como

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Transaction: €28.2 million term loan 

Asset: Prime residential villa 

Location: Lake Como, Italy 

Borrower: Foreign national investor 

Product: Investment and term finance 

A foreign national investor approached Bridging Europe requiring long-term term finance secured against a prime residential villa on Lake Como. The asset was of exceptional quality, a substantial lakeside property in one of Italy's most internationally recognised and sought-after markets. The client had significant equity in the asset and required a refinancing that would release capital for deployment elsewhere in their portfolio within a defined timeline.

Italy presents specific financing challenges for international investors that are not widely understood outside the market. Domestic Italian banks are conservative lenders at the best of times, and for foreign national borrowers they frequently impose conditions that make the financing commercially unworkable. The most significant of these is AUM-linked lending, a practice whereby banks require borrowers to place their investment assets under management with the lending institution as a condition of providing the property finance facility. For an investor with an established wealth management relationship and a defined asset allocation strategy, this condition is unacceptable. It forces the investor to disrupt their wider portfolio in order to access property finance in Italy, which is neither commercially efficient nor strategically sensible.

Finding a lender willing to provide competitive term finance against a prime Italian asset, for a foreign national borrower, without an AUM requirement, is not something achievable through standard channels. It requires specific market knowledge, direct lender relationships, and the credibility that comes from having closed comparable transactions.

Bridging Europe assessed the transaction in full before approaching any lender. The asset quality was exceptional and the LTV was conservative, which gave us confidence that the right lender, properly approached, would be able to deliver competitive terms without the AUM condition. We identified a small number of lenders within our Italian network with both the appetite for the asset type and the structural flexibility to accommodate a foreign national borrower without AUM requirements. We prepared a comprehensive credit submission covering the asset valuation, the borrower's profile and balance sheet, the holding structure, and the proposed use of proceeds, presenting the transaction in a way that addressed every question a lender would ask before it was asked.

We then managed the transaction end to end, coordinating Italian legal counsel, the valuation process, lender due diligence, and the notarial completion process to ensure the transaction moved efficiently from term sheet to drawdown.

A €28.2 million term loan was arranged on competitive terms, secured against the Lake Como villa, without any requirement for the client to place assets under management with the lending bank. The facility was structured to align with the client's broader investment strategy and provided the capital release required within the client's timeline. The client's existing wealth management arrangements remained entirely undisturbed throughout.

This transaction illustrates Bridging Europe's direct access to Italian lenders willing to finance foreign national borrowers without AUM requirements, and our ability to structure and present complex cross-border transactions credibly to conservative domestic lenders in one of Europe's most challenging financing jurisdictions.