Laura Stanciu, Italian multinational banking in interwar
east central EuropeThis article examines the interwar development
of multinational investment undertaken by the most prominent Italian universal
bank — Banca Commerciale Italiana — in Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland
and Romania, referred to here as east central Europe. It analyses the extent
to which considerations concerning universal banking's development are valid
in the case of Italian multinational investment in this region. The article
is neither a study of the 1930s financial crisis nor an analysis of the Italian
universal banking per se. Instead, it questions the implicit relationship
between the fate of the activities of Banca Commerciale Italiana in east central
Europe and the general problems of the universal banking system during the
early 1930s. Evidence seems to suggest that the bank's withdrawal from the
region, beginning in the late 1920s, was more a result of managerial shortcomings
and unsound investment decisions than the crisis.
Regulation, taxation and the development of the German universal banking system, 1884-1913