Italian companies are looking at the health of the banks they rely on in the wake of the current financial turmoil and turning more conservative over how they invest their cash, the head of the country’s Association of Corporate Treasurers (AITI) said.
AITI President Nevio Boscariol told Reuters on Monday most companies would likely wait to see whether steps taken to calm financial markets including the weekend merger of Credit Suisse and UBS had the desired effect before taking any decision.
However, he said there were already signs of “a gradual movement towards a kind of flight-to-quality” after the weaknesses exposed among certain banks over the past two weeks.
“Certainly everyone is re-evaluating their banking quality, those who are well structured evaluate the banks they work with, to work with those banks that show more solidity at the moment,” Boscariol told Reuters.
“Treasurers must protect a company’s cash, in cases such as these they can become very conservative.”
Separately, the chief financial officer of a large Italian company told Reuters on condition of anonymity that they had not taken any steps because the firm relied on a diversified pool of top tier banks, but they would have moved away from mid-sized banks in the current situation.
Source : Nasdaq
