In the interwar period Italian shipbuilders were financially weakened by conflicts among banks, iron and steel companies, and shipping firms, all of whom sought to control the yards and to reduce the industry's excess capacity. In this struggle for survival the most efficient yards were not always the winners. Until about 1923 “natural selection” was at work among the medium-sized shipbuilding companies not linked to the banks, but it did not resolve the problem. Nor did the many financial adjustments of the late 1920s aimed at averting the bankruptcy of large firms and the subsequent transfer of their losses to the banks. Before 1930 the big banks were unable to rationalize the industry. Although effective planning might have succeeded, it did not occur because the banks were more concerned with supremacy; in this struggle, the yards occupied a subordinate position. The creation of a sound maritime sector thus failed, and after the Great Slump the state replaced bank control, especially in shipbuilding, with IRI, a public holding company. While IRI restructured other sectors, it was less successful in shipbuilding.

An examination of the main Italian yards reveals two key features: the critical position of some twenty large shipbuilding companies, the weakest link in a production chain stretching from steel producers to shipowners; and a conflict between managers, keen to improve the quality and efficiency of ship production, and leading banks, which refused to surrender control to competitors in steel, engineering or shipping. These traits explain the over-lending by banks associated with the two principal groups of shipyards. During the 1920s rival conglomerates headed by the two main mixed banks, Banca Commerciale and Credito Italiano, reorganised to try to achieve full integration. But such achievements were limited. In shipbuilding, each bank controlled a group of yards, but because they were incompletely integrated (while some were linked with engineering firms, ties with steel companies were only partial) the banks were compelled to provide funds to support their industrial strategies. Shipbuilding companies thus became sufficiently debt-ridden that they could not be allowed to fail.