The Financial Statements of Italian Popular Banks and Their Evaluation: Some Quantitative Elaborations

This study examines the economic and financial performance of a sample of popular Italian banks that maintained their mutualistic structure after the 2015 reform that imposed the conversion of the largest banks into joint-stock companies. The analysis covers 2013-2023 and employs two financial ratios, profit margin and Tier 1 ratio, to assess the impact of structural transformation and pandemic crisis. First, the size trend is quantified by assessing the asset trend. The methodology integrates balance sheet analysis, variance analysis (ANOVA) and the Tukey-Kramer test to detect significant differences between geographical areas (North, Central and South Italy). The results partially confirm the hypothesis that cooperative banks have grown despite macroeconomic challenges. The Tier 1 ratio confirms the financial stability of the cooperative banks that have remained so. The profit margin, on the other hand, shows territorial variability, suggesting a correlation between bank performance and local socio-economic conditions. These findings contribute to the debate on the sustainability of cooperative banking models. Future research could extend this analysis with additional financial indicators and apply machine learning techniques to improve predictive modelling in performance evaluation.