The Regulation of the Bank of Italy

Abstract

This essay presents reflections aimed at establishing key elements for a theoretical reconstruction of the regulation function.

Through the analysis of financial organization, governance rules, and sustainability provisions, it seeks to demonstrate how supervisory authorities, along with pervasive regulatory frameworks, pursue the objective of protecting savings.

The regulator's numerous interventions impose constraints on business freedom, affect private autonomy, and weaken shareholders' prerogatives, thus creating a dynamic between authority and freedom.

However, the perspective adopted suggests that all public regulatory interventions should be interpreted as instruments enabling the enjoyment of rights that, otherwise, would not be realized. This is because banking institutions, in their autonomous organization, are not capable — using only common law rules — of ensuring the necessary provisions for fundamental rights. At the same time, the very function of banking regulation, within its complex system of administrative powers, is legitimized insofar as it maximizes those rights.