Vincenzo Azzolini

Vincenzo Azzolini was born in Naples. Both his parents came from "old" families. Alfonso Azzolini (1848 - 1928), his father, was a banker and at one point the senior director at the Bank of Calabria ("Banca di Calabria"). His mother, Maria Carolina Serrao-Azzolini, was a magistrate's daughter.

In 1900 he completed his schooling at the Liceo classico "G.B.Vico". This opened the way for him to enroll later that same year at the Faculty of Jurisprudence at the University of Naples. He graduated in 1904. At university he was able to benefit from the presence of eminent legal (and other) scholars of moral and intellectual depth, such as Giorgio Arcoleo, Napoleone Colajanni, Emanuele Gianturco, Augusto Graziani, Luigi Miraglia and Enrico Pessina. But the most important of Azzolini's tutors was the economist Francesco Saverio Nitti: it was Nitti who supervised the dissertation which formed the concluding part of Azzolini's degree course. By 1904 a warm rapport between the two men was established, which was renewed and strengthened after Nitti returned in 1947 from two decades of eventful exile.

He began working in the office of Alfredo Rocco in 1922. Rocco straddled the worlds of academia, journalism and politics, who served as undersecretary at the Treasury under the first Mussolini government, between 1922 and 1924. In 1925, Rocco having moved on to a new job as Minister for Justice, Azzolini competed successfully for appointment as Senior Inspector at the Treasury and became head of "direzione generale" in the department. This brought him into more frequent contact with Bonaldo Stringher who was still in charge at the Bank of Italy with whom he worked on regulations for currency conversion. The context for the work was far from theoretical. 1926 was the year in which the Bank of Italy became the only institution in Italy authorized to issue bank notes. At the same time it was given unprecedented powers (which subsequently would be progressively further strengthened) and obligations in connection with banking supervision. He also worked with the economist-statistician Giorgio Mortara on preliminary documentation on Italian finances and the economic condition of the country ahead of international negotiations for settlement of inter-allied indebtedness. The negotiations would form the basis for what has become known to history as the Young Plan, adopted by the governments involved in 1930.