BOLOGNA, ITALY

Piazza Maggiore, is the central part of Bologna, Italy, where everything starts.

Few days ago it was reported that Italian private banks were under management whose assets dropped to 13 per cent to 734 billion euros because of the sharp market downturn wherein it would probably goes on sale on Monday.

In its summary report Magstat said that "The Italian private banking market underwent a sharp slowdown in 2008,".

The assets held by specialized private banking operators fell by 70billion euros" in large part due to the sudden losses by international bourses", it said.

Report said that Sixty per cent of assets under management was controlled by 59 Italian commercial banks through private bank divisions or stand-alone units. Intesa Sanpaolo SpA (ISP.MI), UniCredit SpA (CRDI.MI) and UBI Banca SpA (UBI.MI) have 40.4 percent of the market or 203 billion euros in assets.

While Foreign investment banks also held 15.6 percent of the market and Independent Italian private banks had 8.6 per cent and no new foreign private banking operators entered the Italian market last year after seven years of new players coming into the market.

Recently it was also reported that the Bologna firm just signed centre-back Andrea Raggi for a loan from Palermo.

This sharp market downturn happened in Italy is definitely the effect of global crisis that has been influencing worldwide which is just the same story happened of the leading banking institution in the U.S. who incurred losses in 2007-2008.