Pursuing its innate international vocation, in 1918 Banca Commerciale Italiana (BCI) opened a branch in New York - its first in the United States. The branch was intended to carry out a range of functions: most importantly, commercial credit, through the documentary draft system on exported goods, and the granting of loans to Italian companies importing to the United States. So BCI obtained the lines of credit acceptance that were being made available by a number of U.S. banks at the time. BCI's subsidiary was also active in collecting the deposits of Italian emigrants and the foreign exchange trade, and served as a sort of U.S. dollar treasury to meet the needs of the greater BCI Group, which had in the meantime - under the leadership of Joseph Toeplitz - set up offices in various Central and Eastern European countries, becoming the largest European bank in terms of the size of its international network by the late 1920s.
BCI's direct presence in the United States enabled it to gather first-hand data on North American markets and products, new technologies, the standardization and "scientific" organization of operations, and marketing philosophies and methods. Indeed, Italy's economists were very interested in the topics of the organization of the banking system, the stock exchange and economic and monetary policy in the United States; one of them, Raffaele Mattioli, would join BCI in 1925, tasked with handling negotiations on American loans to Italy.
Under the supervision of the BCI's central director, Giorgio Di Veroli, the branch was re-organized in 1935 by its new director, Guglielmo Reiss Romoli, but on 11 December 1941, following the declaration of war between the United States and Italy, the assets of the New York branch - like those of other Italian bank branches - were immediately seized and the branch was liquidated. Its director was imprisoned in the Ellis Island internment camp until returning to Italy in 1942.
Despite the fact that its branch had been shut down, BCI charged Di Veroli - who had fled from Italy to escape its discriminatory Racial Laws - with safeguarding the bank's interests in the area and cultivating useful contacts to make use of once the war had come to an end. In 1945 a representative office was opened in New York, tasked with rekindling BCI's relationships with America's financial and business world.
BCI would reopen its branch only in 1969, though the transformation of its representative office.

ASI-BCI, VCA; July 8, 1918; vol. 4, p. 287
ASI-BCI, VCA; October 19, 1918; vol. 5, pp. 22-35
ASI-BCI, VCA; December 6, 1945; vol. 22, pp. 83-84
ASI-BCI, Foreign Network, New York Branch
ASI-BCI, Foreign Accounting Division, Liquidation of BCI's New York branch, Folders 7-8
ASI-BCI, Papers of Di Veroli
ASI-BCI, Paperts of Reiss Romoli