The Via Rossini property has been acquired by a vehicle linked to Orte-based Uniko Group. The winning bid — 38.5% above the auction reserve — illustrates why hotel investors can struggle to compete for institutional disposals when they face buyers able to capture construction margins within their own business model.

Operations & deals · by Roberto Necci

The deal

The sale of the former Bank of Italy headquarters in Pesaro, at the corner of Via Rossini and Via Marsala, has now been formally completed before Pesaro notary Nelson Alberto Cimmino.

The purchase price was €3.6 million.

The buyer is a company linked to Uniko S.p.A. Società Benefit, a general contractor headquartered in Orte, in the province of Viterbo. The transaction appears to have been carried out through a vehicle named La Caldara. Uniko CEO Francesco Pecci had already publicly confirmed the group’s involvement following the award of the property.

The bidding process closed in October 2025 at the Bank of Italy’s headquarters on Via Nazionale in Rome.

Four parties took part: a Pesaro-based consortium comprising two professionals and three local entrepreneurs, a real estate fund, Cattolica-based construction company Sartori, and the Lazio-based group.

The reserve price was €2.6 million.

The winning offer reached €3.6 million, representing a 38.5% premium to the starting price.

Once registration taxes, transaction costs and other ancillary expenses are included, the capital required merely to complete the acquisition is therefore likely to approach €4 million — before any redevelopment work begins.

The Bank of Italy subsequently completed the due-diligence and administrative process required before closing, in line with the broader disposal programme previously examined by InvestimentiAlberghieri.it in our analysis of the former Bank of Italy branches in Alessandria, Lucca, Nuoro and Oristano.

And it is precisely the price achieved in Pesaro that makes this transaction especially relevant for hospitality investors.

The asset: approximately 3,400 sqm in central Pesaro

The building was developed between 1961 and 1967 to a design by engineer Gaetano Minnucci, an important figure in modern Italian architecture.

Its façades combine a base clad in rough-finished grey stone, grey marble string courses, vertical white-marble elements and sections of red porphyry.

The structure itself is reinforced-concrete frame construction.

At ground-floor level, the large central volume originally housed the banking hall. On the upper floors, the same space opens into an internal courtyard providing natural light and ventilation to the surrounding offices.

The reported accommodation comprises:

  • approximately 2,100 sqm of office space, including the lobby and three office floors;

  • approximately 1,300 sqm of residential accommodation;

  • four attic spaces;

  • a forecourt and external area;

  • a basement containing a reinforced bank vault.

The principal accommodation therefore totals approximately 3,400 sqm, excluding ancillary areas.

The Bank of Italy vacated the property in October 2015.

It has stood unused for almost eleven years.

Yet the most significant factor from a redevelopment perspective may be another one: the property does not appear to be subject to a heritage protection order imposed by the Soprintendenza, Italy’s heritage authority.

That materially broadens the range of transformations that may be technically achievable.

It does not, of course, mean that any redevelopment can automatically proceed. Planning use, development parameters, potential variations, structural requirements and permitting all still require detailed verification.

What it does mean is that the purchaser potentially enjoys considerably more design flexibility than would normally be available in a prestigious institutional building of this nature in an Italian city centre.

Uniko has said that it intends to retain the building and pursue a refurbishment strategy, working with architect Marco Gaudenzi’s practice and anticipating discussions with the municipality over certain proposed amendments to the scheme.

Who is the buyer?

Uniko was established in Orte in 2009, initially operating in the high-end windows and doors sector.

In 2011 it expanded into construction.

In 2015 it added an in-house design capability.

From 2018 onwards, the company also became involved in post-earthquake reconstruction projects in Central Italy.

In June 2023 it converted into a benefit joint-stock company and is certified as an ESCo, or Energy Service Company.

Its revenue trajectory clearly reflects the extraordinary impact of Italy’s building-incentive cycle in recent years.

Financial year Revenue
2020 €1.6 million
2023 €85.3 million
2024 €35.1 million

The company is also reported to have generated approximately €6.9 million of net profit in 2023, while employing around 80 direct staff.

Francesco Pecci himself has stated that Uniko delivered approximately €100 million of works under Italy’s Superbonus 110% programme. He also said that leading national banks had provided facilities for the purchase of tax credits amounting to approximately 40% of the group’s turnover over the 2021-2023 period.

Revenue then fell by close to 60% in 2024.

That decline should not automatically be read as evidence of corporate distress.

It is more accurately understood as the end of an exceptional market cycle that affected much of Italy’s construction industry. Companies that expanded their workforce, technical capabilities and financial capacity during that period now need to identify new ways of deploying those resources.

Principal real estate development is one such route.

The financial figures above are based on publicly accessible corporate information and should be verified against the official accounts filed with the Italian Companies Register.

The real question: why pay €3.6 million?

This is what makes the transaction particularly interesting.

Why would a general contractor pay €1 million above the reserve price for a building that has been vacant for almost eleven years?

The answer cannot be found in the underlying real estate value alone.

It lies in the industrial structure of the buyer.

A financial investor acquires a building, pays third parties for design, pays third parties for construction, carries the cost of capital and ultimately has to generate its return from the difference between total investment cost and the asset’s exit value.

An integrated general contractor starts from a different equation.

It can acquire the property, perform part of the design work through internal or affiliated resources, directly manage the redevelopment process and retain within its own value chain part of the construction margin.

In other words, a portion of the return that a conventional investor can generate only through the real estate transaction may, for a contractor, also be generated through the construction process itself.

That distinction is fundamental.

And it can allow the contractor to pay more for the property at acquisition while still preserving the economics of the overall investment.

From Superbonus contractor to real estate developer

The industrial rationale behind the Pesaro acquisition can therefore be viewed in a wider context.

A business whose revenue falls from more than €85 million to approximately €35 million in a single year inevitably has to reconsider how it deploys the productive capacity created during the previous cycle.

One option is to shrink that capacity.

Another is to redeploy it.

Developing property on its own account does precisely that: it shifts value creation away from simply executing projects for third parties and towards the ownership and active enhancement of real estate assets.

The model becomes:

acquisition → design → construction → value creation → sale or income generation

It is the internalisation of the development value chain.

And the Pesaro deal appears consistent with that strategy.

Why the purchase price may make sense

In addition to the contractor’s ability to capture construction margin, at least three further factors may support the price paid.

1. No heritage constraint

Design flexibility has economic value.

A centrally located institutional building with architectural character but without a restrictive heritage designation gives an investor substantially greater freedom than a comparable protected property.

The ability to alter layouts, services, internal distribution and — subject to planning regulations and approvals — uses and physical configurations has a direct impact on:

  • development costs;

  • delivery times;

  • net usable area;

  • exit liquidity and marketability.

This is not merely an architectural consideration.

It is part of the financial value of the asset.

2. Retail discussions are already under way

The buyer has said that it has entered into discussions with two international fashion brands regarding the ground-floor space, adding that the proposed tenants would not compete directly with the neighbouring boutique.

That is not enough to describe the retail space as leased or formally pre-let.

It is nevertheless commercially relevant.

If those discussions result in binding agreements, the retail component could materially reduce the scheme’s leasing and absorption risk.

3. The residential component

The second potential pillar of the redevelopment is the approximately 1,300 sqm of residential space.

The property occupies a central location between Piazza del Popolo and the route towards the seafront.

In a properly structured redevelopment, residential use provides a broader and generally more liquid exit market than hospitality, because value can be realised across several individual units and multiple purchasers rather than through a single operating asset.

And this is precisely where the difficulty emerges for anyone considering a hotel conversion.

Why this is not a hotel deal

The obvious question is whether a former bank headquarters in a prime central location, apparently free of heritage restrictions and offering approximately 3,400 sqm of principal accommodation plus ancillary space, could be converted into a hotel.

Technically, in principle, yes.

But that is the wrong question.

The correct question is not:

Can it become a hotel?

It is:

Should it become a hotel when compared with the alternative uses available?

That distinction changes the analysis completely.

The highest and best use of a property is not simply the use that is technically feasible.

It is the use that, after considering market demand, development cost, timing, risk and return, generates the highest sustainable economic value.

In Pesaro, based on the information currently available, hospitality appears difficult to justify against a predominantly retail-and-residential redevelopment.

There are four principal reasons.

First: hotel demand

Pesaro is an established tourism destination, but its accommodation market has a significant seaside component and therefore a pronounced seasonal profile.

The city also has a historically substantial mid-market hotel stock, much of it concentrated along the seafront and not all of it recent.

A hotel created within the former Bank of Italy building would probably accommodate somewhere in the region of 50 to 60 keys, depending on the final layout, public areas and positioning.

It would not be a beachfront hotel.

To justify such a product economically, an investor would have to demonstrate sufficiently deep year-round demand from segments including:

  • corporate;

  • meetings and conferences;

  • events;

  • culture;

  • urban leisure;

  • groups;

  • weekend breaks.

It is not enough for a destination to generate tourist arrivals.

The key question is whether the right demand exists for that particular product, in that particular location, at the required average daily rate.

That distinction is crucial.

Second: converting a bank into a hotel is expensive

A 1960s bank building was designed around requirements fundamentally different from those of a modern hotel.

A conversion would require extensive re-engineering of:

  • internal layouts;

  • plumbing;

  • domestic hot water;

  • heating and cooling;

  • ventilation;

  • electrical systems;

  • life-safety systems;

  • fire compartmentation;

  • fire protection;

  • lifts;

  • accessibility;

  • acoustic performance;

  • data networks;

  • back-of-house areas;

  • kitchens and F&B facilities, where required.

There would also be structural and seismic assessments associated with the redevelopment and any change of use.

A hotel conversion would further need to comply with the relevant Italian fire-safety requirements, including those applicable under Activity 66 of Annex I to Presidential Decree 151/2011.

Then there is the vault.

A bank vault is architecturally intriguing.

From a construction perspective, it is rather less romantic.

Its heavily reinforced concrete walls and slabs can make demolition extremely expensive.

In some projects, incorporating the vault into the new scheme is more economical than removing it.

But that means adapting the design to the existing building rather than designing the building around the most efficient hotel layout.

Third: CAPEX

Using parameters consistent with a hotel conversion of this complexity, a preliminary and purely indicative range for the building works could reasonably fall in the region of €5 million to €7.5 million.

This is not a technical cost estimate for the Pesaro asset.

It is an indicative range intended solely to illustrate the scale of the investment equation.

On top of that would come:

  • acquisition cost;

  • taxes and transaction costs;

  • design fees;

  • professional advisers;

  • planning and development charges where applicable;

  • FF&E;

  • OS&E;

  • financing costs;

  • pre-opening expenditure;

  • launch marketing;

  • working capital;

  • contingency.

With an acquisition cost approaching €4 million once ancillary costs are included, total project investment could therefore easily exceed €10 million.

For a 50-60-key hotel, that would quickly imply an investment of approximately €160,000-€200,000 per key, and potentially more depending on positioning and the actual complexity of the conversion.

Fourth: the required RevPAR

This is the part that is often missing from discussions about hotel conversions.

A hotel does not become economically viable because the building is attractive.

It becomes viable when its prospective EBITDA can adequately remunerate the capital invested.

If total investment exceeds €10 million, achieving a good occupancy rate is not enough.

The property needs an appropriate combination of:

ADR × occupancy = RevPAR

capable of producing, after operating expenses, a level of profitability consistent with the value of the investment.

Seasonality makes that equation particularly challenging.

A hotel may achieve extremely high occupancy during the summer months and still underperform over the full year if rates and occupancy during the low season are insufficient to cover its fixed cost base and deliver an adequate return on invested capital.

That is why any hospitality conversion of the former Bank of Italy headquarters would need to be supported by a genuine month-by-month operating model, rather than by a simple annual average rate assumption.

The issue is not whether a hotel can be built

The issue is that competing uses can probably afford to pay more for the property.

Retail and residential uses do not have to support the same operating infrastructure as a hotel.

They do not need to fund a pre-opening phase.

They do not need to build and sustain an operating organisation covering staffing, distribution, marketing, revenue management, housekeeping, maintenance and administration.

And, crucially, they can monetise real estate value either through unit-by-unit sales or through long-term leases.

Add to that the fact that the purchaser can execute the construction works itself, and the competitive advantage becomes clear.

For a hospitality investor, the building cost is an expense.

For an integrated contractor, part of that same development expenditure can also represent industrial profit.

That is the key to understanding the Pesaro transaction.

What hotel investors should learn from this deal

The Pesaro case reinforces a pattern already identified in our analysis of previous Bank of Italy disposals.

Former branches do not come to market with a predetermined economic identity.

They are not hotels.

They are real estate assets.

And every potential use competes to determine the highest price that can sustainably be paid.

A hospitality investor is therefore not competing solely against other hotel investors.

It may be competing against:

  • real estate funds;

  • developers;

  • construction companies;

  • general contractors;

  • retail operators;

  • residential investors;

  • family offices;

  • ESCos;

  • integrated owner-builders.

Some of these buyers can assign a higher value to the property than a hotel investor can economically justify.

Not necessarily because they have cheaper capital.

But because they monetise the asset through a different business model.

In Pesaro, three competing parties with different profiles lost to a buyer capable of combining ownership, design expertise and execution capability.

Hospitality investors should pay attention to that.

First implication: know which auctions not to enter

The first lesson concerns asset screening.

Competitive advantage does not come from participating in more transactions.

It comes from eliminating the wrong ones quickly.

If a property’s highest and best use is clearly residential or retail, a hotel investor generally faces two outcomes:

lose the bidding process or win by overpaying.

Neither is an attractive strategy.

The decision not to bid can therefore be one of the most profitable investment decisions an investor makes.

That was the rationale behind our previous analysis of the Bank of Italy properties in Alessandria, Lucca, Nuoro and Oristano, where we identified Lucca as the one asset for which a hospitality thesis appeared worthy of further preliminary investigation.

That does not mean Lucca will necessarily become a hotel.

It means that the relationship between location, building characteristics and potential demand made it reasonable to spend time testing the hypothesis.

Pesaro presents a different equation.

Second implication: the project comes before the price

When dealing with institutional property disposals, investors must understand the precise rules governing each individual procedure.

No two processes are necessarily identical, and it would be incorrect to assume that non-price considerations carry the same weight in every transaction.

There is, however, a broader principle that applies to hospitality investment.

An investor should not reach the pricing stage before it has built a credible operating and investment thesis.

Before submitting a serious expression of interest, the investor should already have considered at least:

  • planning status;

  • heritage constraints;

  • preliminary test fit;

  • potential room count;

  • demand analysis;

  • competitive set;

  • ADR assumptions;

  • monthly occupancy;

  • RevPAR;

  • GOP;

  • EBITDA;

  • estimated CAPEX;

  • FF&E;

  • total funding requirement;

  • operating model;

  • potential operator;

  • stabilised asset value.

Only then should the price be determined.

Doing it the other way around means falling in love with the building first and then trying to construct a business plan that justifies the amount already decided upon.

It is one of the most dangerous mistakes in hotel investment.

What still needs to be verified in the Pesaro transaction

At least three elements still need to be confirmed through official documentation before the deal can be fully reconstructed.

1. The acquisition vehicle

An updated corporate filing should confirm the vehicle’s registered office, share capital, ownership structure, directors and precise corporate relationship with Uniko.

Some local press reports contain details that are not entirely consistent with one another, so the structure should be verified using formal records.

2. The financing structure

This is one of the most interesting unanswered questions.

Was the transaction funded entirely with equity, or was mortgage debt used?

If debt was involved, relevant issues include:

  • which lender provided the financing;

  • the loan-to-cost ratio;

  • the security package;

  • tenor and pricing.

Those details would provide a much clearer indication of the return profile expected by the purchaser.

3. The planning scheme

Any applications or planning amendments submitted to the Municipality of Pesaro should eventually clarify:

  • proposed uses;

  • floor areas;

  • subdivision strategy;

  • retail component;

  • residential component;

  • façade changes;

  • structural works;

  • delivery timetable.

Only then will it be possible to move from an industrial interpretation of the deal to a complete reconstruction of the investment strategy.

The lesson from Pesaro

The former Bank of Italy building is an excellent illustration of a principle that is too often overlooked in hotel investment:

A great building is not necessarily a great hotel.

The location may be excellent.

The architecture may be compelling.

The initial price may appear attractive.

A hotel conversion may even be technically feasible.

But a hospitality investment only works when market demand, product, CAPEX, operations and real estate value all support the same conclusion.

If an alternative use creates more value, that use will usually win.

That is why hotel feasibility needs to be tested before the price is submitted — not after the property has been acquired.

The method

Distinguishing between real estate value and hotel feasibility is a core part of the work performed by an advisor specialising in hospitality.

The objective is not to prove that a building can become a hotel.

It is to establish whether it should become one.

The transaction analysis and institutional-disposal monitoring carried out by InvestimentiAlberghieri.it is integrated with transaction structuring through Investhotel Capital Partners, market and positioning analysis through Hotel Marketing Lab, executive search through Vertex Executive Search and multidisciplinary coordination through Hotel Management Group.

The scope of work may include:

  • preliminary due diligence;

  • planning and zoning review;

  • test-fit analysis;

  • hotel sizing;

  • demand analysis;

  • competitive-set analysis;

  • ADR and occupancy modelling;

  • monthly operating forecasts;

  • CAPEX estimation;

  • real estate valuation;

  • assessment of direct operation, lease, management agreement or franchise structures;

  • operator search and selection;

  • financial structuring;

  • stabilised asset valuation.

Management and professional insights are also published on RobertoNecci.it, while Roberto Necci Academy focuses on management and entrepreneurial education for the hotel sector.

For opportunities involving the direct management and repositioning of hotel assets, the wider ecosystem also includes Necci Hotels.

Are you assessing a property for hotel conversion?

The time to determine whether a hotel investment works is not after the property has been acquired.

It is before the offer is made.

Before submitting an expression of interest, investors can determine:

how many rooms the building can realistically accommodate, what the conversion will actually cost, what RevPAR the market can sustain, what EBITDA the hotel can generate and — ultimately — what the property is worth to a hospitality investor today.

If the numbers do not work together, you need to know before committing capital.

If they do, you need to know the maximum price you can pay without destroying the return.

For a confidential assessment of an opportunity: r.necci@robertonecci.it

Sources: Corriere Adriatico, 8 August 2026; Il Resto del Carlino, editions dated 3 November 2025 and 22 November 2025; Bank of Italy institutional website, property disposals section; publicly accessible corporate sources for company and financial information. Floor areas, permitted uses, planning status, corporate structure, financing arrangements and transaction values should be verified exclusively through official documentation and specific due diligence. The CAPEX, total investment and cost-per-key assumptions referred to in this article are provided solely to illustrate the analytical methodology and do not constitute a technical valuation of the property. This article is intended solely for information and market analysis and does not constitute investment solicitation or investment advice.

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