Bank of Italy has released three new “Working Papers” (nn. 1351-1353):

• Does information about current inflation affect expectations and decisions? Another look at Italian firms,
• Collateral in bank lending during the financial crises: a borrower and a lender story,
• Revisiting the case for a fiscal union: the federal fiscal channel of downside-risk sharing in the United States,

and four new “Occasional Papers” (nn. 646-649):

• Pecunia olet. Cash usage and the underground economy,
• The poverty debate in Italy: from politics to statistics,
• The impact of Covid-19 on international tourism flows to Italy: evidence from mobile phone data,
• Mind the wealth gap: a new allocation method to match micro and macro statistics on household wealth,

(Only in Italian)

COVIP ha presentato nuovamente il Quadro di sintesi sui dati relativi al patrimonio delle casse di previdenza e alla loro gestione finanziaria al 31 dicembre 2020 a causa di un errore contenuto nella Tavola 3, dovuto ad un’erronea segnalazione alla COVIP da parte di INPGI in relazione ai contributi affluiti alla gestione separata nell’anno 2020.

EBA has published new regulatory technical standards (RTS) on disclosure of investment policy by investment firms.

The final draft RTS put forward comparable disclosures that should help stakeholders understand investment firms’ influence over the companies in which they hold voting rights and the impact of investment firms’ policies on aspects such as the governance or management of those companies.

The RTS put forward:

• templates and tables for the disclosure of information on the investment firm’s voting behaviour, explanation of the votes, and the ratio of approved proposal, with the objective to show if the investment firm is an active shareholder that generally uses its voting rights, and how it uses them.
• information on the use of proxy advisory firms that should help address uncertainties about potential conflicts of interest. Finally, they include information on investment firms’ voting guidelines, including, when relevant, a breakdown by geographical zone, economic sector or topic of the resolution being voted.

These disclosure requirements apply to class 2 investment firms with total assets above EUR 100 million. These firms will have to disclose this information in relation to those companies whose shares are admitted to trading on a regulated market and in which the proportion of voting rights exceeds 5 % of all voting rights issued by the company.