An Empirical Analysis of 'Corporate Italy': Legal Entities, Financial and Ownership Structure and Corporate Governance 2004-2012

Abstract

This study provides an overall evidence related to the Italian corporate system, ranging from consistency and dynamics of the different forms of legal entities managing business and economic activities since the introduction of the Vietti’s Reform in 2004, to their corporate governance and ownership structures. This research has a twofold target. For one extent it embraces and completes on a wider historical period previous analyses related to the innovative bodies of law introduced by the above mentioned Vietti’s Reform, giving full evidence about stocks and dynamics of the different features of Italian corporations. These innovative datasets may be useful both for scholars and practitioners in order to have a clear comprehension of the different corporate phenomena and of their relevance. For another extent this paper proposes further completely new data about other patterns of “Corporate Italy” which have never been enquired in a systematic way before. More specifically the paper provides a wide analysis of the ownership structures of unlisted joint stock Italian companies and of the limited liability companies. Moreover it is possible to describe the number of all the mergers and acquisitions deals or corporations’ transformation or liquidation of any sort of legal entities in the year 2012.