Internationalization of Italian banks: INTESA-UNICREDIT, penetration strategies adopted in Chinese financial market. Services offered to clients and comparison between the two important Italian banking groups.

Abstract

During the last decades there has been an important phenomenon that deserves to be investigated and analysed in order to understand the recent penetration of Italian banks in the Chinese financial market. This concerns the fact that many Italian companies have increasingly developed their business by looking for new opportunities abroad, thus increasing their international presence in different countries, improving their services and products in order to meet new customers’ tastes and also developing their penetration strategies. For these reasons, nowadays Italy can boast of very close business relationships with many countries around the world. In this regard this final thesis presents the aim to highlight Italy’s main trade partners and also the interchange volumes between Italy and others nations, by considering the main destination and source countries of Italian import and export. However, within this elaborate particular attention will be given to those relationships established between Italy and China, by analysing the respective volumes of interchange between these two countries in the last years. Furthermore, it will be explained the process of internationalization of banks in general, but with a particular focus on Italian ones’. As money providers, banks carry out their different activities in order to make companies respect their treasury constrain day by day, by collecting all client’s deposits and lending money to those who need it and the importance of these financial intermediaries derives also from the relevant position they recover in the developing system of a country. For example, this is exactly what happened in China, although in the past, the Chinese government did not invest in developing the banking system, however, thanks to the modern political guide of reforms and opening carried out by the Chinese government, recently, some foreign banks were allowed to enter Chinese financial market and set up Joint Ventures between foreign banks and Chinese ones. Therefore, the international banking system provides for many international services for import and export, arranging also trade financing and foreign exchange needs for cross-border transactions and foreign investments. It is also for this reason that banks desire to establish themselves in different countries with the aim to be as close as possible to their clients, through the opening of branches, subsidiaries and representative offices, but, the opening of these in a different country it's not as easy as it may seem, because of the different rules, regulations and laws imposed by the host country. About this last topic, it will be explained and described the Chinese financial market and also reported the supervisory and transparency rules imposed by the Chinese banking system and those ones contained in Circular number 263 of 2006 imposed by the Bank of Italy on the different types of banks, depending on the banking activities provided by the financial intermediaries. Eventually, it will be also reported the presence of Chinese banks in Italy and that of the Italian banks in China, studying the cases of two of the most important Italian banking groups, Banca Intesa and Unicredit, the different adopted penetration strategies and also the services offered to clients, providing an interesting comparison between the two thanks to the help of two directors of the aforementioned Italian banks. in conclusion, the aim of this comparison is to underline the differences and the similarities between the two Italian banking groups and to study their presence in China, one of the world’s fastest growing economy in the last years.