Equity investment by venture capital and private equity funds, which specialize in start-ups and stimulating the growth of small businesses, amounts to 0.2 per cent of GDP in Italy, as in Germany, or half as much as in France and a fifth as much as in Britain.
For many years the Italian banking system favoured the family-based, fragmented structure of its business customers because this gave them positional rents, sheltering them from competition from other sources of funds, namely the financial and equity markets.