Change font size:   

 
Country risk 2010:

Country risk 2010:

Bi-annual Country risk survey monitoring political and economic stability of 186 countries

Euromoney Awards for Excellence 2009

December 2006

How Italian banks built new foundations

by Peter Koh

Rarely has a country’s banking system experienced such an overhaul in such a short space of time as Italy’s has over the past 12 months. The urge to merge has made banks team up with local rivals to avoid being gobbled up by a foreign competitor. The foundation ownership system set up in the 1990s is losing its grip. Peter Koh reports from Milan and Rome.




Politics in and out of the boardroom
Divorce Italian style
Monte dei Paschi looks to the future

ON JULY 12 2006, Mario Draghi, the governor of the Banca d’Italia, gave a speech at the annual meeting of the Associazione Bancaria Italiana in which he urged the chairmen and managing directors of Italy’s banks to consolidate for their own good or look on as foreign players took an even greater share of the market.

After the takeovers of Antonveneta by ABN Amro and Banca Nazionale de Lavoro by BNP Paribas, completed earlier in the year, Italian bankers hardly needed reminding of the problem by the central bank governor.

Clearly, though, his audience must have been paying close attention. Less than three months later, Banca Intesa and Sanpaolo IMI, the country’s second- and third-largest banks, announced their intention to merge, in a €65 billion deal. The market applauded...


You must be a subscriber to access this archived content. 
If your subscription includes access to the archive, please log in now to view. 

To gain access to this content visit the subscription page or call our hotline on +44 (0)207 779 8999.
Subscribe online now and save up to 30% on your subscription.



Subscribe

Subscribers to Euromoney benefit from:

  • 12 months access in print and online - on euromoney.com, read the latest issue early online, search for specific developments by region or sector, interrogate the results of Euromoney's benchmark polls, and view the archive dating back to 1996 
  • More than 30 specialist research guides free
  • The results of Euromoney’s polls and surveys
  • Tailored RSS news feeds direct to your desktop
  • News delivered directly to your mobile device or PC
  • Personalised email newsfeed of 'Top stories' and 'Breaking news'

Click here to subscribe




Ruromoney Jobs Post a job