Bluerating | Settembre 2025
The conflict between UniCredit and Gruppo BPM, regardless of the outcome of the takeover bid, has highlighted the existence of two different approaches to banking, linked to their size, geographic scope of operations, and mission.
Some of these differences were highlighted in an interview published by Vita, a nonprofit periodical, with Umberto Ambrosoli, a civil society figure and son of Giorgio, a victim of deviant finance and collusion with corruption in the 1970s and 1980s (Sindona, IOR, and the collapse of Banco Ambrosiano).
Ambrosoli, despite being a party to the UniCredit takeover bid for Banco BPM as president of the Fondazione Banca Popolare di Milano and Banca Aletti, a historic private bank of the Banco BPM group, makes three observations that could also be interpreted as impartial.
The first concerns the two things that characterize a local bank, namely a widespread presence and restitution. “A bank close to the local areas first of all means having a widespread presence and restituting everything, in terms of investments, to the development of those areas.”
The second consideration concerns our country: “The characteristics of the Italian business system are such that there’s no need for just very large banks. We need local banking biodiversity, closeness to the local community, which in our system is guaranteed by the existence of several smaller institutions, which have organized themselves in such a way as to achieve overall solidity.”
The distinctive feature of the Banco BPM model lies in having “several foundations that connect it closely to the local histories from which it derives. The bank could easily have established local committees and left them with the grantmaking activities that are inherent in the relationship between banks and their local communities. Instead, the purpose of these foundations was to create entities that are autonomous in their assessments of the bank’s own business objectives.”
The third consideration highlights the importance for some banks to consolidate at the European level. Indeed, “we hear from many quarters, especially after the presentation of the Draghi Plan, that there is a need for major European players capable of focusing their resources on major projects of European relevance. Those with this vocation should rightly continue to make European acquisitions and should strengthen their position within Europe.”
It should also be noted that in Italy, alongside commercial banks operating at the national level, strongly focused on profits and stock market performance, there are the Cooperative Credit Banks, local entities with a strong social vocation, focused on supporting the local area and the communities in which they operate.
This isn’t just an Italian phenomenon; in Germany, for example, Sparkassen are local banks, true “savings banks,” often with a long history and strong ties to their communities. They are public financial institutions and, together with credit unions, constitute the so-called “third pillar” of the German banking system, representing a significant portion of the market.
It’s difficult to determine which model is optimal and most sustainable over time, but it’s certain that diversity and banking biodiversity are beneficial to the market, customers, and employees, who can freely choose the one they consider best.
Nicola Ronchetti