The Impact of the Financial Crisis on Italian Banks

Abstract

For a clearer description of the impact of the crisis on the Italian banking system, it is useful to subdivide the period from 2007 to 2011 into two acute phases: the subprime phase of 2007–09, with the turmoil in the financial markets caused by the subprime mortgage crisis, aggravated to dramatic proportions by the failure of Lehman Brothers in September 2008, and the sovereign debt phase from 2010 onward, caused by the sovereign debt crisis affecting first Greece and then the peripheral countries of the European Monetary Union (EMU): Portugal, Ireland, Spain, and Italy. This approach enables us to focus more closely on the first phase, bearing in mind that the second is still ongoing at the time of writing. It also allows a more precise analysis of the crisis’s dual-stage impact in Italy: at a lower level in the first period and at a higher level from 2010 onward, with a trend contrasting with that of other countries in Europe and beyond.