The Management of the Branches of the Italian Banks between 1998 and 2015: A Comparative Analysis

• Author: Edoardo Catelani,Cristiano Verniani
• Date: 01 January 2017
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/jsc.2106
• Published date: 01 January 2017

RESEARCH ARTICLE

Strategic Change 26: 21–34 (2017)

Published online in Wiley Online Library

(wileyonlinelibrary.com) DOI: 10.1002/jsc.2106

Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Strategic Change: Briengs in Entrepreneurial Finance

Strategic Change

DOI: 10.1002/jsc.2106

The Management of the Branches of the Italian Banks

between 1998 and 2015: A Comparative Analysis1

Edoardo Catelani

Università degli Studi di Firenze, Florence, Italy

Cristiano Verniani

Università degli Studi di Firenze, Florence, Italy

Since the beginning of the economic crisis in 2008, the branches of the Italian

cooperative banks have had a better trend in comparison with other banks of the

same kind.

We will examine the behavior of the four types of bank in Italy with regard to the

number of branches in the period 1998–2015, concentrating our attention on the

period of the crisis. e stability of the Italian banking system is one of the prin-

ciples of the supervisory policy for the banks, which is codied by law. Article 5

of the Italian Banking Act states: ‘Credit Authorities wield the powers awarded

them… with regards to the sound and prudent management of the supervised subjects,

to the overall stability [of the system], to the eciency and to the competitiveness of the

nancial system […].’

Assuming that the Italian banking system is stable because the Bank of Italy

and the European Central Bank guarantee and supervise its stability, and consider-

ing that stability does not mean that nothing changes, we focus our attention on

one of the principle variables in a banking system: the trend of the banking

branches. However, it is reasonable to believe that the stability of the banking

system is connected with the stability of the number of branches.

Observing the trend of the number of banking branches existing in Italy from

1998 to 2015, we can distinguish three dierent sub-periods:

1. From March 1998 to March 2009, the number of branches showed a steady

rise, increasing from 25,391 to 34,178 units.

1 JEL classication codes: G20, G21. e section entitled ‘e key features of two

dierent approaches to branch policy’ has been written by Cristiano Verniani; the

remaining sections have been written by Edoardo Catelani. e opinions expressed in

this article by Cristiano Verniani are the author’s own and do not reect the views of

the aliating institute.

The economic crisis that hit Italy

after 2008 has had heavy

consequences for the economic

structure of the banks.

There has been a cut in costs and

even in number of branches.

The cooperative banks have

conrmed themselves as

anticyclical by increasing their

presence during the years

1998–2015.