The bank is liable for the work of its intermediaries who, without providing the necessary risk indications, have created economic problems for investors. This was underlined by the I civil section of the Court of Cassation in the case of the customer who sued Banca Carige asking for the nullity of the purchases of Argentine bonds, repeated over the years.
In particular, according to the client, they complained that they had been presented as "risk-free and high-yield", while at the end of 2001, with Argentina's default, "the investment had been essentially eliminated". The judge of first instance rejected the requests referring to the purchases made between January 1997 and January 2001, while he accepted the request for resolution concerning the third purchase concluded on 22 January 2001 "due to the bank's failure to fulfill the information obligations envisaged" by the TUF .
Carige appealed against the court's decision and the investor, for its part, in turn filed a cross-appeal and requested the nullity of the contracts from 31 January 1997 and 29 January 1998. The Court of Appeal rejected the appeal principal and accepted all investor requests.
The Bank then turned to the Supreme Court which rejected the appeal. Among the reasons for the decision, the Supreme Court explains that "in terms of financial intermediation, the plurality of obligations" which belong to the subjects authorized to carry out financial transactions "converge towards a unitary purpose, consisting in reporting to the investor, in relation to the his ascertained propensity for risk, the inadequacy of the investment operations he is about to carry out (suitability rule)".
