Marco Cravero has joined Mediobanca in Milan as executive director and head of fixed income flow, as the bank seeks to expand its existing capital markets business into the corporate bond space.
Mediobanca is expected to take a focused, specialist approach to providing research and trading services in targeted European credit, beginning with Italian names across investment grade (IG) and high yield (HY) for financials and corporate bonds.
“We are not looking to compete on scale, with regards to volume and blocks,” he says. “We are more focused on quality, being able to supply customers with ideas and then supply them with the liquidity towards those ideas, underpinned by our research analysis tools and by going directly to portfolio managers to build relationships.”
The bank is known as an equity house, but with fixed income and cross asset support becoming an increasingly promising revenue stream the firm is tapping into cross-selling opportunities, supporting both voice and electronic trading. It is not expected to develop a single dealer platform, but to connect with well-established electronic venues.
“The approach will be very qualitative and concentrated so we will support conversations with PMs and traders, and then if their trading is routed via an electronic platform, no problem whatsoever, but we’ll develop relationships over the phone and in face-to-face meetings in order to establish our specialist name in the market,” Cravero says.
Cravero has a strong background in the credit markets, having worked as a director of credit sales in global banking at BNP Paribas and at HSBC. He also has platform knowledge, having worked at MarketAxess as fixed income sales director.
“We really want to focus on bringing the best that we can on Italian bonds, for financial and corporate names,” Cravero adds. “With elections in Italy next week, I’m sure the Italian market will be a massive focus for investors.”
