TURNAROUND PROCESSES AND CORPORATE GOVERNANCE STRUCTURE: EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE FROM ITALIAN LISTED COMPANIES

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between governance structures and turnaround processes in Italian capitalistic model. In fact, aside from the analysis of single cases, no specific empirical studies seem to have been carried out on the relationship between the single aspects of governance and turnarounds/crises in Italian companies, in which the reference model is that of the family company, even if they are listed companies. This study does not extend the results obtained by studies carried out in different contexts tout court to Italian companies, but it considers the peculiarities of Italian model of capitalism, characterized by a concentrated ownership structure, in which the main conflict of interest becomes that between controlling shareholders and minority shareholders. On this basis, the research project examines how simultaneous developments in governance structures might contribute to the processes of turnaround themselves in a sample of Italian listed companies. In particular, enquiry is aimed at analysing the dynamics underlying the ownership structure, the TMT composition and the Boards of Directors composition (i.e. including independent Directors, size, turnover), structure (CEO duality, existence and composition of the audit committee) and functioning. The research has been structured as follows: 1) Literature review; 2) Formulation of specific hypotheses; 3) Definition of a framework of the phenomenon “turnaround” and selection of a sample of turnaround firms; 5) Selection of corporate governance variables; 5) Analyses and results