Riccardo Dal Monte
MSc Finance at Luiss Business School in Rome
Background in private equity, corporate finance and M&A, with hands-on work in financial modelling, valuation and restructuring
About Me
I studied Economics & Management at Luiss (109/110), with an Erasmus semester at Universidad Loyola in Seville. Since then I've worked across private equity, corporate advisory and student consulting.What keeps me curious is how companies allocate capital, and the decisions that determine who scales and who doesn't. That question shaped my thesis on Europe's gap in AI infrastructure, and it's why I chose a master's in finance.Connect with me!
Work Experience
Finance Intern · BIG Partners
Rome · Jun 2026 – present
Corporate finance and advisory. I build three-statement models and DCF valuations, support restructuring work under Italy's Corporate Crisis and Insolvency Code, and work with business owners on M&A teasers and the financial plans behind post-investment turnarounds.Investment Analyst Intern · PM&Partners SGR
Milan · Jul 2025
Private equity, on the buy-side deal team. I analysed 50+ target companies (statement reclassification, EBITDA normalisation, working capital), supported valuations with comparables and precedent transactions, and prepared investment materials for 10+ acquisition targets. I worked on the fund's acquisition of a majority stake in Seta Beauty Clinic, which closed in 2026.Associate & Project Manager · JELU Consulting
Rome · Nov 2024 – Sep 2026
JELU is the Luiss junior enterprise, a student-run consultancy working on real client projects. I did hands-on consulting work there alongside a team of fellow students.Business Analyst Intern · WDA | The Co-Founder You Need
Rome · Jun – Jul 2024
My first experience with business and financial planning: target and user base analysis, and presentations built in Canva.
Thesis
Data Centers, between Innovation and Strategic Dependencies: the European Scenario for Attempting a Catch-Up
BSc thesis · Luiss Guido Carli, 2026Research question
Europe has the world's second-largest number of data centers, yet depends on US providers for over 70% of its cloud infrastructure market. Can the EU catch up in data centers and AI, and under what economic, institutional and geopolitical conditions?How I approached it
I mapped Europe's dependencies along the AI value chain, from chips to foundation models, then compared three scenarios: a full catch-up to the technological frontier, a targeted "below the frontier" strategy, and doing nothing. I weighed the costs and benefits of each using published estimates (the Draghi report, McKinsey, Bruegel and others), and tested current EU policy (the Chips Act, sovereign cloud, EuroStack) against what each scenario would need.What I found
• A full catch-up is possible, but it's a bad deal. It would cost over €500 billion by 2030 for benefits that are uncertain and shrink as the technology converges.
• A targeted strategy, building on sectors where Europe is already strong (robotics, advanced manufacturing, pharma, automotive, energy), is feasible. About €200 billion invested by 2030 could return an estimated €480 billion a year.
• Doing nothing means falling further behind. Dependence on foreign cloud and software would cost Europe an estimated €421 billion over ten years, while its productivity gap with the US keeps widening.
• Funding is the main bottleneck. In late-stage rounds, the US invests more than ten times what Europe does.Relevance of the Topic
Europe's gap is less about technology than about how it finances and coordinates itself. When capital markets can't fund companies at scale, capital and talent move elsewhere, and dependence on foreign infrastructure becomes a lever others can pull.
