Any post-virus “reconstruction” will almost certainly flow along the axis linking Porta Nuova, a zone of steel-and-glass skyscrapers that’s the heart of a new financial district, and the Piazza Affari (“Business Square”) in the historic center, anchored by the heavy, neoclassical 1930s home of the Borsa Italiana stock exchange.
The banks clustered in those areas will funnel billions in government assistance to firms and families. In March, lenders agreed to a moratorium on repayments of mortgages and other debts of small and medium-sized businesses, and the government said it will guarantee loans needed to keep those companies in operation. And banks have agreed to advance laid-off workers money the state has promised them but that won’t be released for several more weeks.
“It’s important for the banks to be here to support the economy,” says Jean Pierre Mustier, CEO of UniCredit SpA.
The virus crisis is unfolding just as Italy’s banks have finally gotten back on their feet after the 2008 financial crisis. But the lockdown has slowed banks just as it has every quotidian task, from getting deliveries of food to filling prescriptions at the pharmacy. Bank branches only allow customers in the door every second day, so people needing a bridge loan or extra financing will face delays if they can’t complete a request online. “I’m still waiting for an appointment,” says Maurizio Guidi, co-owner of EUSolar Srl, a builder of solar plants seeking to expand his company’s credit line to cover costs during the lockdown. “They’re overwhelmed with calls.”
The crisis has cleared out both poles of Milan’s banking world. Piazza Gae Aulenti, a vast expanse of concrete and stone flanked by Cesar Pelli’s glistening UniCredit Tower, is a ghost town as most people stay home. The handful who do show up are checked with a thermo-scanner for signs of fever. Two miles south at Intesa Sanpaolo SpA’s “Ca’ de Sass” (Stone House), a 19th-century landmark modeled after renaissance banks in Florence, the neighborhood is similarly abandoned. No bankers in their suits, no tourists taking selfies, no diners in the restaurants, where the counters are empty and the chairs sit upended on the tables.
Then the quiet is shattered by an ambulance, taking another victim to overburdened doctors clad head-to-toe in protective gear, or by police patrolling the streets with a megaphone atop their cars endlessly bleating the message: “Stay at home. Don’t go outside. Stay at home. Don’t go outside.”
Since Italy’s first coronavirus infection was identified in a nearby town just six weeks ago, some 8,000 people have died from Covid-19 in Lombardy—almost 60% of the country’s total fatalities. To deal with the surge in cases, Fatebenefratelli hospital, about 10 minutes by bike northeast of the Borsa (or five minutes by metro, but few want to take it these days), has converted its pediatric ward to accommodate coronavirus patients. Sacco hospital, on the northern periphery, has suspended autopsies for the duration so its staff can stay focused on the virus.
Portello, a historic manufacturing area where Alfa Romeo once made its sporty sedans and two-seaters, is seeing the city’s most ambitious healthcare effort to deal with the virus. Two pavilions in the Fiera Milano exhibition center are being turned into a field hospital with 200 intensive care beds for infected patients.
The facility, built in an unprecedented 10 days and expected to start receiving patients next week, highlights the sense of civic solidarity that the pandemic has spawned. The 40 million-euro cost was covered by donations from the likes of former Premier Silvio Berlusconi and Leonardo Del Vecchio, chairman of eyeglass giantEssilorLuxottica SA. TV celebrity-chef Carlo Cracco has been preparing specialties such as risotto and frittatas for the 70 workers building the hospital. Luca Rovati, the son of billionaire pharmaceutical pioneer Luigi Rovati, secured 260 ventilators from China for the facility.
“The city has united to do the impossible,” says Enrico Pazzali, chairman of Fondazione Fiera Milano, the operator of the exhibition center. “Everyone has been engaged in making this happen. They want to be part of something in this moment of tragedy.”