KfW and Italy's CDP step up their cooperation - Main areas: export finance, strategic controlling and municipal finance - Agreement on staff exchanges

Frankfurt (ots) - Today Franco Bassanini, Chairman, and Giovanni
Gorno Tempini, Chief Executive Officer at Italy's Cassa Depositi e
Prestiti (CDP), and Dr Ulrich Schröder, Chief Executive Officer of
the KfW Group, met in Berlin in the context of an enhanced dialogue.
The working meeting aimed to intensify the dialogue and cooperation
between the two institutions, which have been collaborating for many
years as founding members of the Long-Term Investors' Club.

The main topics addressed during this meeting were export finance,
strategic controlling and municipal finance. In addition, the two
institutions agreed on an exchange of staff and expertise. This is to
be done in the framework of short-term and longer-term secondments
and give experts from both institutions the opportunity to better
familiarise themselves with the business activities and promotional
instruments of the other party.

"Particularly with a view to overcoming the financial and economic
crisis, it is very important that banks with broad experience in
stimulating the economy and providing long-term financing cooperate
closely", explained Dr Schröder. As a promotional bank of the Federal
Republic of Germany, over many years we have actively taken
responsibility for strengthening international partnerships between
promotional banks and actively shaping European networks. CDP is one
of our most important partners in Europe", said Dr Schröder.

"CDP is playing an increasingly important role both at the
national and at the international level. Accordingly, a systematic
comparison with our European partners including KfW, some of which
have different business models but a similar mission and are
fulfilling the same mission of providing long-term finance, is
currently very useful", said Bassanini.

"Our institutions have many common fields of interest. These
include infrastructure finance, export finance and the financing of
SMEs", explained Gorno Tempini. He also pointed out that exchanging
staff "enables our institutions to get to know each other better, to
expand our employees' expertise and broaden the possibilities of
future collaboration."

About CDP:

Cassa Depositi e Prestiti (CDP) is a joint-stock company under
public control, that manages postal savings, - its main fund
collection method. CDP uses these funds according to its
institutional mission of supporting national growth, financing the
public administration investments, and acting as a catalyst for the
growth of Italian infrastructure and business. CDP is the main
shareholder of listed companies like Eni SpA, Terna SpA, and Snam
SpA.

CDP is a founding member of the Long-Term Investors' Club that
brings together long-term institutional investors from around the
word. The group's aim is to affirm the importance of the role of
long-term investments in favor of international economic growth and
financial stability.

Contact:
KfW, Palmengartenstr. 5 - 9, 60325 Frankfurt
Kommunikation (KOM), Dr. Charis Pöthig,
Tel. +49 (0)69 7431 4400, Fax: +49 (0)69 7431 3266,
E-Mail: presse@kfw.de, Internet: www.kfw.de