{"title":"Banking and Eurodollars in Italy in the 1950s","authors":"Ioan Achim Balaban","doi":"10.1017/eso.2022.11","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"This article challenges current interpretations of the rise of the Eurodollar market. It argues that rather than being the exclusive innovation of British banks, the Eurodollar market had also Italian origins. Foreign-currency lending in Italy in the 1950s was characterized by competitive behavior. I explain the accumulation of Eurodollar deposits by Italian banks as resulting from the fact that nonresident foreign-currency deposits were not subject to reserve requirements. Furthermore, I discuss the attitudes of the Bank of Italy regarding the financing of foreign-currency credits with nonresident dollar deposits (Eurodollars) and compare the Eurocurrency liabilities of Italian banks vis-à-vis those of the City of London. The comparison facilitates an approximate estimation of the size of the Eurocurrency market in the late 1950s and, even more importantly, a recalibration of the view that the City of London was the dominant Eurodollar player from the outset.","PeriodicalId":45977,"journal":{"name":"Enterprise & Society","volume":"24 1","pages":"759 - 783"},"PeriodicalIF":0.7000,"publicationDate":"2022-03-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Enterprise & Society","FirstCategoryId":"98","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1017/eso.2022.11","RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q4","JCRName":"BUSINESS","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
This article challenges current interpretations of the rise of the Eurodollar market. It argues that rather than being the exclusive innovation of British banks, the Eurodollar market had also Italian origins. Foreign-currency lending in Italy in the 1950s was characterized by competitive behavior. I explain the accumulation of Eurodollar deposits by Italian banks as resulting from the fact that nonresident foreign-currency deposits were not subject to reserve requirements. Furthermore, I discuss the attitudes of the Bank of Italy regarding the financing of foreign-currency credits with nonresident dollar deposits (Eurodollars) and compare the Eurocurrency liabilities of Italian banks vis-à-vis those of the City of London. The comparison facilitates an approximate estimation of the size of the Eurocurrency market in the late 1950s and, even more importantly, a recalibration of the view that the City of London was the dominant Eurodollar player from the outset.
期刊介绍:
Enterprise & Society offers a forum for research on the historical relations between businesses and their larger political, cultural, institutional, social, and economic contexts. The journal aims to be truly international in scope. Studies focused on individual firms and industries and grounded in a broad historical framework are welcome, as are innovative applications of economic or management theories to business and its context.