The paper aims to understand if and which lessons have been learned since the financial crisis of 2007–2008, highlighting the main deficiencies which still affect the corporate governance and risk management systems more than a decade after. A survey was performed by collecting the answers to 15 questions about corporate governance and risk management practices, given by a representative sample of 200 finance professionals (100 from the USA, 50 from Italy, 50 from the UK). The survey allows saying that corporate governance codes and risk management approach, even though improved and implemented over the past decade, still present problems in terms of principles or application. The results provide insights into how corporate governance issues are addressed and how financial institutions and regulators learn and adapt from a crisis. The paper also gives new perspectives on corporate governance, indicating where regulators need to focus on to rethink the governance mechanisms.
This conceptual paper focuses on the relationship between insolvency, capital structure, and value creation. The aim is twofold: to define risk-based capital measures able to absorb the effects of financial distress and avoid corporate default; and to verify conditions and limits of use of these measures in corporate financial policies. The capital measures based on insolvency risk will be defined by recalling the concepts of Cash Flow-at-Risk and Capital-at-Risk. A first check on the usefulness of these risk-based measures and their consistency with the principle of value maximization is carried out through a simulation model. The scenario analysis allows us to examine how financial and risk policies oriented by insolvency avoidance affect the firm value. According to evidence from the simulation model, these measures appear to be useful in lowering the default risk, but they require a continuous assessment of their impact on the firm value.
Matter of interest is the disclosure on intellectual capital (IC) in the era of global "knowledge economy" or global "knowledge society". The aim of the paper is to verify the level of disclosure that Italian companies have on the components and on the relevance of their IC. Using the "content analysis" and a specific method already tested in managerial literature, we propose a report that measures the intellectual capital with the adoption of 21 functional indicators, which consider specific aspects of intangible assets of a firm. Applying the content analysis to financial statements of 56 companies included in five super-sector stock indexes of Italian equity market, we find that the level of overall disclosure is, on average, moderate but increasing. Observing a disclosure index based on the specific components of intellectual capital considered in this research, all the aspects of IC have benefited, on average, of an improvement in the level of external communication. This paper represents an improvement of a paper presented at the Symorg Conference regarding the empirical analysis. At the same time, it is just the first step of a wider research that aims to verify the relationships existing between IC, firm performances, and market capitalization.
PurposeThe matter of interest is the reporting and disclosure of intellectual capital (IC) in the global “knowledge economy” era. The aim of the paper is twofold: to verify the level of disclosure of IC through the non-financial statements (NFSs) published by public companies and to identify the main firm-specific factors that explain the propensity to disclose.Design/methodology/approachBased on the 27 components of IC, a scoring system is designed to measure the level of disclosure of IC by 47 listed Italian companies. Content analysis (CA) is performed on the NFSs these companies published in 2020, to measure each company's so-called intellectual capital disclosure index (ICDI). A regression analysis is then applied to relate the ICDI scores to some firm-specific variables to determine their relevance and influence on the level of disclosure.FindingsAlthough the NFS was not designed specifically for IC, the results of the analyses show an overall barely satisfactory ability of the NFS to give certain information on IC. Furthermore, the propensity to disclose IC appears significantly related to some firm characteristics considered here, such as capitalization, profitability, productivity, intangibility and financial structure.Research limitations/implicationsThe analysis relates to a representative but limited sample that does not allow for sectoral or time-series analyses. Extending the companies and years under observation would allow the results to be validated with broader and more in-depth analysis.Originality/valueThis paper provides exploratory but interesting evidence about the relationships between IC disclosure (ICD), firm characteristics and market capitalization. Despite several previous studies on the disclosure of IC, no analyses were found that focused on the information capacity of the NFS. Also, to the authors' knowledge, relatively few researchers have considered a set of financial ratios that include capital structure indices.
The aim of the paper is analysing the relationship between governance systems and safeguard of minority shareholders in Italy. We believe that an appropriate governance system can favour a fair distribution of value to shareholders of listed companies regardless of the size of the share held. We studied the tender offers made in Italy in the period 2000-2009 to calculate the relationship between the compliance of governance systems with best practices and size of majority premiums paid in take-over transactions, measured through offer prospectuses. The empirical research shows a negative association between the mentioned variables. So this seems to suggest that the compliance with best practice codes can influence the majority premiums in tender offers and protect minority shareholders
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