Italy cannot be divided mechanically in two areas, an industrialized North and Center and a lagging South. A new ABI-Censis research traces eight segments that can be of great interest for banking activity and to define economic policies for an harmonic territorial development

Italy has a potential to reverse the negative cycle of the last years and to continue its action in budgetary reforms for recovery. Institutions, companies, banks must work together with a common strategy for revitalizing productive investments, technological innovation, education

Credit crunch is an obstacle to project financing bankability, which represents a starting point in order to restart anticyclical infrastructural investments. New instruments, such as project bonds defined by recent Italian legislation, need to be complemented by milder taxation and a more...

Structural reforms and investments are the key drivers for the Italian economy. Banks can help Smes in their recovery process, acting as consultants and tutors in diversifying their financial sources. Securitization, minibonds, new funds, extension of collateral are important tools that...

The development of a long lasting relationship between banks and firms requires greater cooperation between the two parties, which must be based on transparency, availability of the right quantitative and qualitative information, the correct and complete use of these information by banks, in...

To estimate the probability of default of companies and the correlated rating classes, it is necessary to use efficiently the information contained in different databases. In this respect, we propose a novel approach, based on the recursive usage of Bayes theorem, that can be very helpful in...

The crisis has strongly influenced the funding policies in Italian banks, pushing them to raise their stock of time deposits, an attractive product for retail customers in terms of low issuer risk and no market risk

Establishing a European Banking Union offers clear opportunities: to break bank-fiscal interactions, national supervisory silos and home biases, to reduce fragmentation and improve single market, to stabilize the euro. Nonetheless it involves also risks related to the crisis management...

The proposal for a Directive and the related impact study presented by Ec in 2012 have the purpose to reorganize the financial systems crisis regulation, with particular emphasis on bank recovery and resolution. The new harmonized rules identify three groups of measures relating to prevention,...

Networks development and technological innovation are the challenges that the interbank payment system will face to ensure efficiency and reliability to the operations involving businesses, citizens and public administrations. In Italy, as part of efforts to implement the Digital Agenda, is...