BANCHE E BORSA VALORI NELL'ITALIA IN TRANSIZIONE

This paper examines the issues and facts that have affected the banking system and the Italian Stock Exchange during the transition years, from 1945 to 1948 and then in the years immediately following. Italy in the last post-war period was a poor country in which savings struggled to express substantial flows of capital available for financial investment. Savers' own preferences were above all for the most secure government bonds. However, the banking system was kept stable in the new regime dictated by the 1936 Banking Act and thanks to the firm and competent work of the Bank of Italy that always defended the specialization of banks avoiding the mix between short-term and medium- and long-term financing. For this reason MEDIOBANCA was set up in 1946 as a body to complement the operations of the major banks controlled by IRI. The good conditions of those years favored an exceptional economic development which for this reason was called economic miracle. However those conditions did not reverberate in the following years, those closest to us. New facts have happened generating discontinuity, but they are part of another story.