The bank with tentacles
INVESTORS would dearly love to know the deepest secrets of every bank and the most intimate details of corporate borrowings. The Bank of Italy can afford to smile. As Italy's bank regulator, it has almost unlimited access to banks' books and runs a classified database of all bank loans of even modest size. Which is nice because, as Italy's central bank, it is also one of the country's biggest stockmarket investors.
This article appeared in the Finance & economics section of the print edition under the headline “The bank with tentacles”
From the July 19th 1997 edition
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