SOCIETÀ ITALIANA DI DIRITTO ED ECONOMIA
Olivier Butzbach (University of Campania "Luigi Vanvitelli")
Abstract
The 2007-8 global financial crisis and its aftermath seriously undermined the prevailing organizational form and business model of retail banking, that of large, diversified, vertically integrated banking groups; and revealed the deep, long-seated irresponsibility of banks and bank managers towards their clients and society as a whole. While regulatory reforms have made diversification and vertical integration more difficult, a few economists have called for both a return to ‘narrow banking’ and efforts to streamline banking operations. These efforts, however, remain limited by a misleading view of banks that is rooted in both neo-classical financial intermediation theory and in contractual theories of the firm, and thus prevents a return to a responsible model of banking. This view is erroneous, both in theory and in law. Debunking these views is thus a first step towards revitalizing a conceptualization of banks, whose translation in regulatory policies may pave the way for a more responsible model of banking businesses. The aim of this paper is, therefore, to propose a new legal/economic conceptualization of banking, building both on (US) critical legal scholarship about banking and on an analysis of persisting "institutionalist" buidling blocks in contemporary European and US banking law.