Rassegna storica del Risorgimento

184
Paul Martin Howell
most imposing railroad projects reached fruition in the second half of the 1850s, the bank nonetheless played a leading role in railroad investment and finance during the decade. It was the biggest 'investor in two of the kingdom's three private operating companies and practically the sole owner of one spur. It floated two bond issues for one railroad company and shared in another bond issue for another one. At the end of 1855 the Cassa del Commercio owned private securities of ali types valued at two million lire. A year later its railroad shares alone had a par value of 4.4 million lire and the figure rose to 9.0 million at the end of 1857 and to 9.4 million at the end of July 1858. With its bond holdings the bank's direct investment in the Kingdom of Sardinia's railroads, at par or issues prices, reached 10.8 million lire at the end of 1857 and 10.4 million lire in the middle of 1858. The Cassa del Commercio's indirect contribution through its lending against rail shares made its total exposure at least 11.1 million lire at the end of 1857 and at least 13.0 million lire in the middle of 1858, again, at par or issue values. The bank's railroad commitments amounted to roughly mineteen percent of its effective capital at the end of 1856, to roughly forty-four percent of its effective capital at the end of 1857, and to roughly fifty-two percent of its effective capital in the middle of 1858.63*
As large and important to the bank as its investment was, it was stili but a very modest proportion of the total committed to the kingdom's railroads. At its peak, the Cassa del 'Commercio's exposure amounted, in fact, to but 3.7 percent of the total of more than 350 million lire which was pledged to the kingdom's rails. If we leave aside the state's system and the Fréjus tunnel project between Piedmont and Savoy, and look only at the net investment in private companies in the kingdom, the Cassa del Commercio's share in the middle of 1858 becomes about 8.1 percent. If we narrow our perspective even further and look orily at the net capital investment in the kingdom's Italian provinces, the Cassa del Commercio's share in the middle of 1858 becomes roughly 13.3 percent. The bank's share was approximately twenty-five percent more than the total that centrai and locai governments poured into private companies in Piedmont at the time of their formation, and governments sold their shares steadily as the decade progressed. The Cassa del Commercio's investment in the middle of 1858 was also a bit larger than the total contribution of English contractors to Piedmontese rails, and they too liquddated their holdings as the decade progressed. The most significant foreign investment in the kingdom was in Savoy and in the proposed transalpine route into the Piedmont via the Simplon pass, which did not bear fruit untìl much later in the century. A final way of placing into perspective the Cassa del Commercio's position in the Kingdom of Sardinia is to look at operating groups. The state and the Compagnia Vittorio Emanuele each ran about forty percent of the total and the companies in which the Cassa del Com­mercio dominateci ran the remaining twenty percent.64)
tó) Computed from tablet in Howell, pp. 204, 244. ) Howell, pp. 178-192.