Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to highlight opportunities for the banking sector arising from the population’s aging and the expected reduction in pension incomes. Home equity conversion (HEC) instruments are a potentially useful way of restoring households’ finances and satisfying...

Since small and medium-sized enterprises and innovative start-ups always face greater difficulties in obtaining capital from traditional sources of finance, the development of alternative funding tools such as equity crowdfunding has helped them to bridge their financing gap. The purpose of this...

Equity crowdfunding is an emerging financing tool that can help social start-ups and firms to collect people and resources around a project. This paper focuses on equity crowdfunding. We look at this as a complementary financing channel useful for promoting innovation and social change by...

Why was the Italian Banking System more resilient during the sub-prime crisis and harder-hit in the sovereign crisis? Will their strength in the retail market result as an asset or a liability for Italian banks in the future? This book offers an in-depth analysis of one of the most important EU...