Italy’s banks and the national interest

Without denying the status of banks as fully-fledged businesses yet reaffirming their intrinsic difference to any other type of entrepreneurial undertaking, participants at this roundtable discussion called for banks to go back to conducting “traditional” banking activities. With uncritical zeal for a model based solely on maximizing profit, debate in Italy is once again focusing on a financial intermediation model that is more responsible with respect to public interests.The financial crises of recent years have brought to light the vulnerabilities of a system that is too complex to be left exclusively in the hands of the alleged self-regulatory capacity of the market.Exposed to levels of risk that were unimaginable until little over a decade ago, families, businesses and communities need a credit management system that focuses once more on really protecting savings – as guaranteed by article 47 of the Italian Constitution – but which, at the same time, supports growth through the allocation of resources and the granting of finance in a manner conducive to the achievement of development and cohesion goals, both nationally and within individual communities. The current situation thus demands that banks reconcile the goal of maximizing shareholder value with that of protecting general interests. This does not mean they should renounce the efforts to increase efficiency and productivity that in the last twenty-five years have revolutionized the very nature of credit institutions, contributing to banks assuming an entrepreneurial character that was previously foreign to the Italian banking tradition.But how can this private-law character be reconciled with the protection of general interests? This is a question which is difficult to answer per se but which assumes an even greater significance in Italy, culturally accustomed as it is to attributing to the State the role of sole protector of public interests. The issue hinges on two fundamental and complementary factors. On the one hand, there is regulation – long-evoked, indispensable and largely well-received by industry operators. On the other hand lies responsibility – understood not so much or solely as an exercise in transparency and propriety in managing intermediation, but as implying perspicacity, activity which fosters development and a willingness to assume risks beneficial to the common interest. From this perspective – and at the height of a global crisis that is difficult to decipher – the Italian economy would seem to need the banks now more than ever if it is to resume growth and regain its competitiveness.