Trading expeditions were financed by rich investors who, if they put up all the initial capital, often got 75% of the profits, the rest going to the merchants who amassed the goods and then shipped them to wherever they were in demand. This arrangement, used for example by the Genoese, was called a commenda. An alternative setup, the societas maris, was for the investor to provide two-thirds of the capital and the merchant the rest. The profits would then be split 50-50. Behind these major investors, there developed consortiums of smaller investors who put up their money for a future return but who could not afford to pay for a whole expedition. Thus, there developed sophisticated mechanisms of borrowing and lending, which involved a very large number of families in the Italian cities, in
