The cooperative credit system in Europe has been affected to a lesser extent by the crisis than other banks: cooperative banks have maintained a good quality of loans and a low pro-cyclicality of credit supply. The paper aims to investigate, in the years 2007-2009, the influence of some features of governance on performance and loan quality, in a sample composed of 45 Italian cooperative banks.The main results show, on the one hand, the positive contribution that can be generated by the presence of directors with a prolonged stay in the board; on the other hand show conditions of inefficiency of the larger boards and the need to dial the latent conflict of interests between the different categories of stakeholders
