Both deals were hustled forward by the creation of Banca Intesa last year when Cariplo and Banco Ambrosiano Veneto, two largish northern banks, joined forces.
ECONOMIST: Italian banking
2.
Part of that new evidence is testimony given in 2004 and 2005 during inquiries in Rome into the murder in June 1982 of Roberto Calvi, Banco Ambrosiano's chairman, just before the bank's collapse.
ECONOMIST: Italy and the Mafia
3.
The Vatican Bank was last mired in scandal in 1982 when its governor Archbishop Paul Marcinkus was indicted over his involvement with the collapse of what was then Italy's largest private bank, Banco Ambrosiano.
BBC: Vatican Bank 'investigated over money-laundering'