Turin Stock Exchange: the locations and the historical events

Founding

The Turin Stock Exchange was instituted by a Royal Decree signed by Count Cavour on 26 November 1850. Evidence of an active financial marketplace before its official establishment in 1850 was already evident earlier, however, in the provisions in the Code of Commercial Law of 1842 on stock exchanges and brokerage, and by a draft law of 1847 demonstrating that brokers were active in Turin, Genoa and Nice.
The Turin Stock Exchange was created under the legal system of the House of Savoy, which was extended in subsequent versions to the other regions that became part of the Italian territory. The Albertine Code of Commercial Law of 1842, the law on brokerage of 1854 and the following Codes of Commercial Law of 1865 and 1882 under which the Turin marketplace developed its organisation also provided the regulatory framework for all the other Italian stock exchanges until the formulation of the unified law on stock exchanges of 1913.

The market

Although Turn was the political capital of the Kingdom of Italy, it was never the financial capital. The Genoa Stock Exchange, officially established in 1855, had been operating for some time with high trading volumes that far outstripped those of the Turin marketplace. This is evident in a draft law of 1847 on brokerage which set the maximum number of brokers for Genoa at twelve, six for Turn and four for Nice: the law was not adopted but the proportion in the number of brokers gives an idea of the relative sizes of the three marketplaces. Starting in 1852, a service was set up for the rapid transmission of the Paris Stock Exchange prices to Turin. Turin's importance on the Italian economic scene grew in tandem with the industrialisation process, although Genoa's role as the leading financial marketplace of the nation was gradually taken over by Milan. The city's relatively high importance during the Second World War was based primarily on two factors: the strong investment capacity of the local financial community and the fact that some of the major Italian listed companies were located in the Turin area.

Premises

In 1850, the premises of the Turin Stock Exchange meetings were established at the Chamber of Commerce in Via Alfieri 9. In 1873, the Exchange was moved to Palazzo d’Agliano in Via Ospedale 28, where its sessions were held until the Second World War: in December 1942, a bombardment made it necessary to leave the building for the first time and although it was quickly reconstructed, the following August it was permanently abandoned. During this difficult time, temporary quarters were provided by the Artists' Club in Via Bogino 9. In 1951, the Chamber of Commerce began construction on the modern stock exchange building located between Via San Francesco da Paola and Via Cavour, which housed the Turin Stock Exchange from 1956 to 1992.