Ten years ago, Italian banks were on the brink of collapse—the most fragile in Europe. But the world has changed since then. Over the past five years, no one in Europe has grown faster than Unicredit, Bper Banca, and Banco BPM. Furthermore, fourth-place German bank Commerzbank owes much of its performance to the expansionist ambitions of Italy's Unicredit, which has significantly increased its stock value over the past year. Intesa Sanpaolo, the country's top bank, is not on the podium, yet its share price has risen 261 percent in spite of generous dividends. Only the two largest Spanish banks, BBVA and Santander, have been able to stay up due to their significant Latin American presence. The other major continental banks have been held back by internal difficulties and economic crises, first in Germany (Deutsche Bank is only eighth in stock market performance rankings) and more recently in France, with BNP Paribas and Crédit Agricole falling far short of the top spots they had long held. Even continental giants headquartered outside the eurozone, such as Britain's HSBC or Switzerland's UBS (which was dealing with Credit Suisse's collapse and bailout at the time), were unable to compete with the top three Italian banks, despite experiencing significant growth and remaining in the lower half of the rankings. For the Italian banking sector, this is nothing short of a triumph.