"From Banca AGCI to Banca Cambiano 1884 spa” is the title of the book by the Director of FIRSTonline, Franco Locatelli, which is presented this afternoon in Rome (Palazzo Firenze, Sala del Primaticcio, Piazza Firenze 27, h. 17.30) and which can offer food for thought when it reopens the season of mergers and banking consolidation.
The book, published by goWare and enriched by the preface of the president of Prometeia, Angelo Tantazzi, and from the interviews of the main protagonists of the story of the two banks, tells – as the subtitle clarifies – the story of the wedding between the youngest and the oldest cooperation bank in the world, between the Agci bank and the then Bcc of Cambiano, the oldest existing cooperative credit bank in Italy, which at the beginning of 2017 gave birth to the new spa and the first independent bank in Tuscany.
The story of the marriage between the two banks is not an irrelevant banking affair in the suburbs but, on the contrary, a particular and intriguing story, unique in its own way, which for this very reason deserved to be told and known. A story that rests on three bets or, if you want, up three challenges, the outcome of which was by no means obvious, especially if one takes into account the external context in which it took place between the first and second decades of the new century, i.e. in the midst of the greatest global economic and financial crisis since the collapse of 1929.
The first challenge is that of the very birth of Banca Agci, a bank born in the heart of the world of cooperation and within the secular headquarters of the coops in 2005 but which started its operational activity precisely in the year in which – 2008 – the American bank Lehman Brothers went bankrupt by surprise making systemic a financial crisis hitherto limited to subprime mortgages. There were not many who thought that the Banca Agci adventure could be successful but evidently the young bank, defying the law of gravity, was born under a lucky star.
The second challenge is that of the way out of cooperative credit – the first and for now only one since the 2016 reform – decided by the oldest and most glorious CCB existing in Italy, the Bcc of Cambiano, born in the XNUMXth century in the heart of the Tuscan Valdelsa, to make the leap in quality by transforming itself into a limited company.
The third challenge was the marriage between the small and young Banca Agci and the old and solid Bcc di Cambiano which gave rise, at the beginning of 2017, to the new one Banca Cambiano 1884 spa.
Luckily for the two banks, all three bets were successful and their experience - which today will be revisited by the top management of the two banks - can offer more than a reason for reflection to those who are preparing to animate the new season of aggregations banks, repeatedly recommended by the Bank of Italy.
