Italian Credit Cooperative Banks

In Italy there are two categories of cooperative banks: "Banche di credito cooperativo" (Credit Cooperative Banks or Mutual Banks, hereafter CCBs) and "Banche popolari". While closing this chapter (June 2015), they are both under reform. A recent law, entered into force in March 2015, has stated that “Banche popolari” with more than 8 billion euro of assets must be converted into limited companies. The cooperative governance, with the “one member - one vote” regime is therefore maintained only by smaller ones. For CCBs a reform of the network is currently under debate. In what follows we concentrate on CCBs since "Banche popolari" cannot be considered mutualistic companies ("Banche popolari" will be briefly introduced and discussed at the end of section 2).