Old Europe is buying the New World

It's New York City's oldest skyscraper. The most beautiful, too, many say. But the Flatiron Building at Broadway and Fifth Avenue is now mostly Italian. The Sorgente Group, which is based in Rome, bought a 53 per cent stake in the Flatiron Building earlier this year.

Falling property prices in the US and a weaker dollar have attracted a record number of Italian investors. They bought 14,500 buildings in the US in the first six months of the year, an increase of 15 per cent over the first half of 2008. Because opportunities to buy "trophy" buildings in Rome are limited, funds like Sorgente are looking across the Atlantic. "You can build on Fifth Avenue, but not on Piazza Spagna," Valter Mainetti, chief executive of Sorgente, told the Financial Times. "New York and London are expanding along their rivers, but we are not building along the Tiber."

Italians have historically seen property as their most important investment. Because Italy has escaped the housing-bubble collapse that other parts of the world experienced, Italian investors now have money to spend. According to the Financial Times, Sorgente is now negotiating to buy San Francisco's Transamerica Pyramid.