I addressed two – the role of the banking foundations and the governance of cooperative banks – in my concluding remarks last May. Here I would like to offer some further considerations. In most cases the presence of the foundations among banks’ shareholders has fostered stability. During the crisis, in the absence of other large investors, some of them underwrote very substantial capital increases.
On the contrary, the pressure to adjust deriving from the single market and from globalisation will, if anything, tend to grow stronger rather than weaker. BIS Review 30/1997  -5-  Incidentally, the increasing competitive pressure by no means implies that all countries have to pursue the same economic and social policies.