The Italian stock market confirms itself as increasingly bank-centric. With the floods of profits and risky transactions in recent months, the credit sector has seen its value literally explode: as of August 14, the nine banking stocks in the FTSE MIB had reached a total capitalization of more than 298 billion euros. Considering that the entire index is worth about 850 billion euros, this means that banks now weigh more than one-third of the main list (at the end of July they were estimated at more than 38 percent). Driving the sector are, of course, the two largest Italian banks, Intesa Sanpaolo and Unicredit. Together they are worth more than 205 billion euros (98.1 and 107.4 billion euros, respectively), or nearly a quarter of the entire stock market. Both have just filed record semesters despite the start of the ECB's rate-cutting cycle. At the European level, by value, they are second only to Spain's Banco Santander (122 billion euros).