TIMELINE
1982: Istituto Bancario San Paolo (IBSP) branch opened in Amsterdam.
1986: Banca Commerciale Italiana (BCI) representative office opened in Amsterdam.

At the tail end of the nineteenth century Banca Commerciale Italiana (BCI) began to operate in the Netherlands through correspondent banks. One of these - Amsterdamsche Bank - played a role in the revival of the Società Generale Immobiliare di Roma, a failed real estate company in Rome, in 1898-99. In November 1926, the director of the Dutch bank - who had been in touch for some time with Joseph Toeplitz, then BCI's Managing Director - signed an agreement as the Dutch Committee's representative with a Swiss group to redeem bonds issued by the Strade Ferrate Meridionali.
BCI's Milan headquarters and its London and New York branches opened various credit lines for Dutch banks (usually using the bill discounting method) in the 1920s. There were also other exchanges between the two countries of a cultural and scientific nature, such as BCI's participation in an international banking conference in Amsterdam in 1928, as well as in another in 1932 focused on the "scientific organization" of work. The bank's representative at the event, Antonello Gerbi - then director of BCI's research office - proceeded to visit Central and Western Europe to observe how bank research offices in the region, including the Netherlands, worked.
BCI opened its first direct operational office in the country in 1986, setting up a representative office in Amsterdam. Thanks to its proximity both to Europe's leading financial centers and to Scandinavian markets, Italy's sixth largest trade partner, the office helped the bank achieve its aim of developing further trade and commercial opportunities with Northern Europe, which it did through an operational unit called the "business production office".
A few years earlier, in 1982, Istituto Bancario San Paolo had also set up a branch in Amsterdam as part of its program to strengthen its international network.