Savills IM SGR wins Bank of Italy approval for Italian direct lending platform

Savills Investment Management SGR has received authorization from the Bank of Italy to extend its operations to managing Italian alternative investment funds set up for direct lending, taking the Italian arm of the €25.5 billion investment manager into real estate debt. IREI first reported the approval. The platform will offer institutional investors a range of direct lending solutions that fund Italian borrowers, with the products focused on income-producing assets owned by institutional capital.

Giovanni Trespidi, with Savills IM since 2021 and more than 11 years in the Italian real estate lending market and the management of real estate AIFs, leads it. The operation is entirely separate from Savills IM DRC, the manager's European debt strategy. That separation shapes the book: a standalone Italian platform likely originates and underwrites its own credits rather than drawing allocations from a pan-European mandate, and it will be measured on the loans its own team can find.

Savills IM SGR manages €7.6 billion of real estate through equity strategies, on behalf of approximately 20 institutional investors, held through real estate funds and SICAFs and invested across retail with a specific focus on food retail assets. Growth has been consistent: more than €1.2 billion of new acquisitions in FY 2025 alongside €200 million of capex for refurbishment and repositioning, then €360 million of acquisitions against €170 million of disposals in H1 2026.

That equity book is the platform's calling card. A lender that already knows which sponsors own which income-producing Italian buildings carries the raw material of underwriting into a first meeting, and the food retail concentration narrows the field further. The first credits are likely to look like the existing portfolio, since underwriting against buildings the equity side already holds is a different exercise from pricing a stranger's deal. The institutions being sold the debt are also likely to be the same ones already in the equity funds, which eases introductions but settles nothing.

The coverage does not say whether the platform will lend against properties the Italian equity funds already hold or originate only from third-party sponsors. The difference decides whether this is a captive lender compounding an existing book or one competing against every other Italian debt fund for the same loans. Where the first deals land, on the food retail assets the equity side already owns or on sponsors Trespidi's team has to win cold, will show which.