Silvia Del Prete

Banking Consolidation and Bank-Firm Credit Relationships: The Role of Geographical Features and Relationship Characteristics

Using data on bank credit relationships, the paper shows that after a merger or an acquisition involving two or more banks which had previously jointly financed the same firm, the share of credit granted to the client by the consolidated intermediaries moderately decreases over three years. This does not necessarily imply a reduction of the overall credit granted to the firm, because after mergers and acquisitions the probability of diversifying the mix of lenders increases. A geographical closeness between bank and firm, or a membership of the firm in an industrial district, by reducing information asymmetries and the cost of soft information, seem to mitigate or offset the decrease in the share of credit provided by consolidated banks. By contrast, if a firm is in financial distress or located in the South of Italy, diversification is significantly enhanced.

Bank Acquisitions and Decentralization Choices

In this paper, we investigate whether the banks’ involvement in acquisitions is correlated with the distribution of decision�?making powers across hierarchical levels and loan officers’ turnover. To this end, we use survey data on the organization of small business lending, collected at the end of 2006 on a sample of about 300 Italian banks, combined with balance sheet data drawn from the Bank of Italys Supervisory Reports. Focusing on acquisition effects and controlling for size, performance and organizational characteristics, we find evidence of higher decision�?making powers in granting credit to SMEs for the main hierarchical layers of acquired banks. In particular, the powers of both the branch loan officer and the Chief Executive Officer are larger for target banks recently involved in a deal. Entering a group moves power delegated to both ends of the hierarchy within the target bank towards the higher levels shown by the bidder, to merge different cultures and credit policies. This effect appears immediately after the deal; it is persistent after a three�?year period and it is stronger if the geographical reach of the target bank is well known by the bidder. However, higher decisional lending power within the target bank is balanced by increasing branch managers’ turnover consistently with the rising monitoring costs due to growing organizations’ higher risk of losing control over decisions.

Bank Internationalization and Export Propensity: An Analysis on Italian Provinces

The main idea of this paper is that bank internationalization might encourage exports as banks’ foreign branches and representative offices provide financial and informational support to exporting firms. This hypothesis has been tested using bank and firm data at Italian province-level between 1993 and 2001. The empirical analysis suggests that there is a positive relationship between bank internationalization and export propensity. The effect seems to be concentrated in the scale and high-technology sectors (according to Pavitt classification), presumably reflecting the greater need for banks’ support in more complex and product-differentiated markets.

Lending Organization and Credit Supply During the 2008-09 Crisis

Using a dataset that combines bank organizational variables with information on firms’ credit demand and balance-sheet indicators, we investigate the impact of how bank lending was organized on credit dynamics during the 2008-09 financial crisis. Our main findings suggest that the organization of lending to non-financial firms had an impact on the ability of banks to expand credit. Those that made substantial use of credit scoring techniques actually moderated the pace of credit growth during the economic downturn. At the same time, banks that delegated more power to branch managers were likely to expand lending at a faster rate. Finally, contrary to the evidence from the pre-crisis period, we find that lengthy branch manager tenure in the same branch was detrimental to the rate of credit growth. These findings are robust to a broad set of robustness checks.

The Right to Decide and the Effective Control Over Small Business Lending Decisions: A Look into Loan Officers’ Real Authority

A vast literature has emphasised that small banks are at a comparative advantage in lending to small businesses. In this paper, we show that, in addition to bank size, loan officers’ authority affects banks’ specialisation in small business lending. By using a unique dataset based on a survey of Italian banks, we find that loan officers’ authority has a key role in explaining bank specialisation in small business lending. In particular, banks that delegate more decision‐making power to their loan officers are more willing to lend to small firms than other banks. We use several proxies for measuring loan officers’ authority: their discretion in loan approval and in setting loan interest rates, the amount of money up to which they are allowed to lend autonomously, their turnover, their compensation schemes and the kind of information (soft vs. hard information) used both for screening and monitoring purposes.

L'alta tecnologia in Liguria: aspetti strutturali e finanziari

L’alta tecnologia in Liguria: aspetti strutturali e finanziari (di Silvia Del Prete - Stefano Federico) - ABSTRACT: Nell’ultimo quinquennio sono sorte alcune iniziative che agglomerano a livello regionale aziende che fanno uso di tecnologie avanzate nel processo produttivo. Tra queste vi e la costituzione del c.d. Dixet nel Ponente genovese e di un Distretto tecnologico dei sistemi intelligenti integrati nell’area metropolitana di Genova. Inoltre, nel 2004, Genova e stata scelta come sede per la costituzione dell’Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (IIT), destinato a svolgere funzioni di agenzia nazionale per la ricerca e i progetti di innovazione. Alla luce dell’importanza crescente del fenomeno a livello locale, lo studio si propone di fornire un quadro coerente e sistematico dei settori ad alta tecnologia in regione, mettendo in luce la struttura produttiva, l’evoluzione delle attivita delle imprese nonche le peculiarita dal lato del finanziamento. Utilizzando una pluralita di fonti statistiche, tra cui i bilanci delle imprese, i dati Istat e Eurostat e le statistiche creditizie, il lavoro si articola in due parti: una prima sezione descrive le caratteristiche e la dimensione del settore high tech nel contesto dell’economia regionale; una seconda sezione e volta, invece, a evidenziare se la particolare natura degli investimenti e delle attivita di RS solo per la provincia di Genova si riscontra una specializzazione, anche se non molto marcata, nell’alta tecnologia, a conferma, secondo quanto suggerito in letteratura, della propensione delle attivita high tech ad agglomerarsi sul territorio. Dalla meta degli anni novanta l’andamento dei settori ad alta tecnologia e stato piu favorevole rispetto a quello degli altri settori, come e evidenziato sia dall’aumento del numero di occupati sia dai migliori risultati economici delle imprese, con l’eccezione di singoli casi aziendali. Indicazioni meno confortanti arrivano invece dalla propensione a esportare dell’industria ad alta tecnologia, inferiore a quella gia contenuta degli altri settori, e dai brevetti depositati all’European Patent Office, che, in rapporto alla popolazione, si mantengono su livelli piu bassi di numerose regioni italiane. Con riferimento agli aspetti finanziari, le imprese liguri dell’alta tecnologia sono generalmente contraddistinte da un livello di indebitamento piu contenuto rispetto a quelle appartenenti agli altri settori produttivi in regione, sia considerando dati medi sul periodo analizzato sia esaminando la dinamica sull’intero intervallo temporale per gruppi di imprese. Tale evidenza e coerente con l’ipotesi della minore tangibilita dei loro attivi e, di conseguenza, delle minori garanzie disponibili a tutela delle ragioni dei finanziatori. Le aziende innovative sono mediamente piu rischiose, ma anche piu profittevoli, e spesso fronteggiano un costo del debito piu elevato, visto l’operare di maggiori asimmetrie informative tra proprieta e finanziatori, perche piu giovani e piu difficoltose da valutare. Per le imprese di minori dimensioni sono rilevanti anche i finanziamenti all’interno del gruppo di riferimento, nell’ambito dei cosiddetti mercati interni dei capitali. Dal complesso delle evidenze descrittive tratteggiate nel lavoro non sembrerebbero quindi emergere indizi di un maggiore razionamento del credito nei confronti delle aziende high tech rispetto alle altre.