I am glad that we have been able to bring together so many of his colleagues and friends who down through the years had the fortune to appreciate his intellectual and human qualities.
And I am especially glad that we are gathering here at the Bank of Italy, the institution where he spent a good part of his professional life and the environment in which he first built an international reputation. An institution that, like the others he worked in, he helped to forge and to which he always remained deeply attached.