Italian banks and the supervisory authority Banks’ situation and performance The results of the stress tests for the European banks published on 23 July 2010 confirmed the high degree of resilience of the major Italian banks to scenarios prefiguring not only macroeconomic decline but also a significant increase in sovereign risk.
From the beginning of April to yesterday, CDS premiums for the three largest Italian banks rose by 63 basis points, reflecting the increase in those on sovereign debt. The Italian banks, together with their Spanish counterparts, are the only ones in the euro area to have  2  BIS Review 148/2010  maintained premium levels lower than those on sovereign debt.