Italian banks remain among the most attractive in Europe in terms of investment. This was stressed by Marco Elio Rottigni, Director General of ABI, during the Bain Banking Event 2025 held in Milan. Rottigni pointed out how, in the first five months of the year, the price-to-book ratio - an indicator that measures the ratio of a bank's market value to its book value - of Italian banks stood between 1.2 and 1.3, approaching the levels of U.S. banks (equal to 1.5) and being almost double the average of European systemic banks, which is stationary at 0.7. "It is the index that measures how attractive an investment in a bank is," Rottigni explained, pointing out that no Italian institution is among the European systemic banks, which makes the result obtained even more significant. According to the ABI Director General, the difficulties of European banks in competing with American banks lie mainly in two factors: regulatory fragmentation within the European Union and lagging investment in digitization and cybersecurity. "The European market is large, with 450 million inhabitants and significant depository assets, but it lacks a homogeneous regulatory framework," he said. And on digitization, he added, "In the United States, investment has been going on for years; in ours, the rules are still unclear and not always the same for everyone”.