Capital markets and banks have different ways of "knowing" the firms that require finance, Bank of Italy senior deputy governor Salvatore Rossi argued in speech in Sondrio on Friday, adding that "markets can only gather and process data; banks, in addition to data, can acquire direct knowledge of firms".

"For an Anglo-American [the financial system] basically means markets," Rossi noted. "For a European, and even more for an Italian, it means banks."

He added that while "the share of sources of