the world of private banking

CHAPTER 10
Private Bankers and Italian Industrialisation
Luciano Segreto
Introduction
The role of private bankers in the process of Italian industrial development has
never been studied in depth and detail. On the other hand, studies on the relations
between banks and industry have, in general, focused on the changes wrought in
the Italian financial system by the process of reorganisation of the entire Italian
banking system that began in the mid-1990s. The emergence of the Banca d’Italia
generated the initial reorganisation of the issuing banks, and the consolidation
of the mixed bank brought the Italian banking world significantly closer to the
European standards. Effectively, since according to many economic historians
this process was functional to if not actually decisive for Italian industrialisation,
over the last thirty years studies on banking in Italy have concentrated specifically
on the development of the relations between the mixed banks and the sphere of
industrial enterprise, through an attentive examination of Gerschenkron’s model
for Italy. An initial phase, marked by a substantial confirmation of the validity
of this explicative model, was followed by a partial decline (and the consequent
strengthening of revisionist positions), which nevertheless opened the path to a
clearer understanding of the role played by the Bank d’Italia and the State, not
only in the modernisation of the financial system, but above all in the definition of
a stable framework within which mechanisms of accumulation were guaranteed
in a country on the road to industrialisation. This evolution of the debate paved
A. Gerschenkron, Il problema storico dell’arretratezza economica (Turin, 1965); S.
Fenoaltea, ‘Decollo, ciclo e intervento dello stato’, in A. Caracciolo (ed.), La formazione
dell’Italia industriale (Bari, 1969); S. Fenoaltea, ‘Riflessioni sull’esperienza italiana dal
Risorgimento alla prima guerra mondiale’, in G. Toniolo (ed.), Lo sviluppo economico
italiano 1861–1940 (Bari, 1973); A. Confalonieri, Banca e industria in Italia (Milan,
1975, 3 vols); F. Bonelli, ‘Il capitalismo italiano. Linee generali di interpretazione’, in
Storia d’Italia, Annali 1 (Turin, 1978), pp. 1193–255; P. Hertner, Il capitale tedesco in
Italia dall’Unità alla prima guerra mondiale: Banche miste e sviluppo economico italiano
(Bologna, 1984); G. Toniolo, Storia economica dell’Italia liberale 1850–1918 (Bologna,
1988); more recent S. Battilossi, ‘The History of Banking in Italy: the Debate from the
Gerschenkronian Mixed Banks to the Financial Road to Development’, in G.D. Feldman
et al. (eds), The Evolution of Modern Financial Institutions in Twentieth Century, B 12,
Proceedings, Eleventh International Economic History Congress (Milan, 1994), pp. 117–
39; A. Polsi, Stato e banca centrale in Italia. Il governo della moneta e del sistema bancario
dall’Ottocento a oggi (Rome Bari, 2001).