Marco Caneva

Director, Milan

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At a glance

Marco has worked in the financial services and strategic advisory sector for over 20 years. His career spans across a wide range of industries and continents, having worked with some of the world’s largest corporations, advising CEOs and CFOs in many of their most critical decisions.


M&A and corporate finance at Goldman Sachs

After earning his MBA at the Anderson School at UCLA, Marco spent 10 years in the investment banking division of Goldman Sachs in their London, Paris and Milan offices, where he was involved in a number of large cross border mergers, as well as in a multitude of financing structures for some of the highest profile global companies. Notably, he devised the first asymmetric collar structure in Europe in the context of the Tiscali-WorldOnline takeover, led the execution team on the $60bn Aventis raid defense from Sanofi-Synthelabo, advised Unicredit in its takeover of HVB, (at the time, the largest cross-border deal in the commercial banking sector in Europe). On top of a number of IPOs in various jurisdictions, Marco was involved in some of the largest and most complex acquisition financing deals between Europe and the US, such as the three-tranche security offerings by Lottomatica in its takeover of G-Tech and by Finmeccanica in its acquisition of DRS.


From advisor to principal investor

More recently, Marco served for 7 years as the Chief Investment Officer of a European multibillion dollar family office. Besides overseeing capital and asset allocation, he was responsible for a number of significant investments across sectors: from technology to chemicals, from healthcare to banking. He led both the due diligence and negotiation phases, while coordinating the external legal, accounting, investment banking advisory teams. He gained unparalleled experience in corporate governance by serving on boards for US, European and Chinese companies, where he was often given specific powers to lead strategic reviews, M&A negotiations and personnel selection.


CalIt Advisors

Recently, he co-founded CalIt Advisors, a consulting boutique that supports Italian tech companies seeking entry into the US market.


Education

Marco earned a B.Sc cum laude in Chemical Engineering from Università di Genova and an MBA from the Anderson School at UCLA, where he achieved the Dean’s List every quarter and received the award for academic excellence from the Italian-American Chamber of Commerce.