 After the merger, , Banca Popolare di Milano, excluding Banca Akros, had 604 branches.The second cooperative bank in Italy (the first one was the Banca Popolare di Lodi), it was founded in 1865 in Milan by Luigi Luzzatti, who later served as the nation's Prime Minister.Luzzatti drew his inspiration from the 'credit associations' developed by Hermann Schulze-Delitzsch in Germany a decade earlier.