Development Strategies between Italy and Romania after the War and the Birth of the Romanian-Italian Commercial Bank: A Historical Overview

With the Unification of Italy, in addition to the issue of establishing political and administrative frameworks for the nation state, new needs came up, as the one to select tools and actors to structure the national banking and trade systems. The development of strategies for Italian commercial and financial internationalization responded to these new needs by channeling political and economic interests and their evolution have been influenced by the historical evolution of the Italian peninsula. As part of those strategies, the Italian and Romanian Commercial Bank (Romcomit) have been one of the most successful economic and political actors. Romcomit was set in the policy of expansion abroad of the Italian Commercial Bank (Comit): since the twentieth century, the Italian Commercial Bank acted to convey national interests towards new markets, selecting the Balkan-Adriatic-Danube macro-region as one of the main areas for a potential expansion of the banking sector. This choice was justified by reasons of cultural contact, economic opportunity and migration flows, in addition to the geographical proximity factor. The attraction of Eastern Europe for the Italian banks and lending institutions grew up in the aftermath of the First World War, driven by the Italian postwar geostrategic priorities and by the convenience of the exchange rates. With the end of the war and with the financial weakening of Germany, the exchange rate of the Eastern European countries was more than 7%, compared with 2-3% rate of Western Europe. Romania, in particular, became attractive to the international banking powers due to the predisposition of Bucharest to accept foreign credit institutions. The Balkan capital had more than one hundred central offices of foreign banks between the two wars. Italy worked since the early twenties to join Romanian capital by investing in key-sectors of Romanian production (oil, insurance, wood), which was also the starting point for post-war reconstruction of the above-mentioned Balkan country.