Intrecci proprietari, concentrazione e competizione nel sistema bancario italiano

During the ‘90s the Italian banking system went through an intense restructuring process which, among other things, involved the selling-off of state held banking shares and a wide consolidation wave. This process played a crucial role in transforming the ownership structure of Italian banks, favouring a limited number of subjects to hold relevant shares in nearly all of the largest national banking groups, thus giving rise to a web of cross-ownership. This paper deals with this phenomenon and intends to empirically investigate the effects of cross-ownership on concentration and competition in the Italian banking sector. This aim is pursued by implementing the Modified Herfindahl-Hirschman Index and the statistic developed by Rosse and Panzar (1977,1982) and Panzar and Rosse (1987). With respect to the period 1997-2000, the empirical results show that cross-ownership among Italian banks was a hindrance to competition in the national banking sector.