| Banca Generale | |
| Type: | Private company |
| Industry: | Financial services |
| Founded: | in Milan, Italy |
| Fate: | Bankrupt |
| Hq Location City: | Milan |
| Hq Location Country: | Italy |
| Products: | Investment banking |
The Banca Generale was a major Italian investment bank between its founding in 1871 and its bankruptcy in 1894.
The Banca Generale was founded in 1871 in Milan and started operations in 1872. Its backers included two interrelated European financial families, the Bischoffsheims and Goldchmidts; Vienna-based Unionbank; and Italian bankers from Milan, Trieste and Turin, such as the Weill-Schott and Morpurgo families. Together with the Credito Mobiliare, the Banca Generale dominated the Italian investment banking market in the 1870s and 1880s. and the two were the dominant financial institutions in Italy other than the country's six banks of issue.[1] The Banca Generale eventually went bankrupt on, in a context of financial fragility following the domestic Banca Romana scandal and international panic of 1893.
Former executives at Banca Generale moved to leading positions in the two banks that became dominant in the later 1890s, namely at Banca Commerciale Italiana and Enrico Rava at Credito Italiano.