Keywords: italian banking system; local banks; proportional regulation.
The purpose of the paper is to highlight the perspectives of Italian banks which
may be defined as «local», which have recently gained market shares in the deposit
and loan business. In the Author's opinion, in the new functional and institutional
distribution of activities in the Italian financial market which will stem out of the
crisis, local banks will be able to keep their essential role only if they will strictly
stick to the financial needs of limited geographical areas and if their operations and
pace of growth will purposedly and prudentially not exceed the actual availability of
adequate managerial and capital resources, within a regulatory framework based on
clear definitions of the «proportionality» of rules.