 |
Through late May and early June last year, an intriguing document suddenly appeared in the inboxes of those who make their living absorbed by the baffling intricacies of Italian banking. The paper was a challenge to anyone with a dodgy internet connection, a chunky 10 megabyte PDF file spread over 151 pages. When printed, it was about as big as a medium-sized book, not quite a felled forest but rather more than a casual weekend read for those who received it.
It read almost as if it was an excellent piece of fact-based journalism – impeccably detailed and referenced to clear inside sources and informants. The report wasn’t journalism, but what would prove to be a prescient research paper from two London-based Italian analysts, Andrea Filtri and Antonio Guglielmi from Italy’s biggest investment bank, Mediobanca.
The Mediobanca paper painstakingly documented what many observers of the Italian banking scene believe is a fundamental flaw in many of the country’s banks, and one that many analysts believe requires urgent reform if Italy is to progress out of its economic funk and develop a modern, transparent banking sector.