Italian firms’ financial leverage is high by international standards: in 2012 the ratio of financial debt to the sum of that debt and shareholders’ equity at market prices was 49 per cent in Italy against 34 per cent in France and the United States, 39 per cent in Germany and 42 per cent in the United Kingdom and in the euro area as a whole.
Analyses of firms’ financial statements indicate that these differences are due only in part to dissimilarities in sectoral and size composition. Italian households invest only a small amount in listed shares (2 per cent of their total financial assets, against 4 per cent in Germany and on average in the euro area). Only a small proportion of Italian investment funds invest widely in shares.