The importance of sustainability reporting has grown steadily over time and banks, as intermediaries in the capital allocation, are significantly involved in the issue. By analyzing the development of studies on banks' sustainability reporting over the past 30 years, this contribution aims to set up a conceptual framework for guiding historical research and glimpsing future directions. Most of the literature on sustainability reporting is organized by specific topics and rarely by periods, while research in this area suffers from the lack of historical analysis models. The study addresses these two research gaps by applying the historical approach both to a structured literature review and to the interpretation of the results. The theoretical utility of the study consists in the development of a conceptual framework for historical research, while its practical relevance lies in indicating to banks and lawmakers the critical issues and opportunities of the ongoing regulatory changes.

The adequacy of the fair value concerning the historical cost is particularly debated in the literature. This study aims to analyze the Italian legislation on financial statements to verify whether the historical cost is so far from current values. The method applied by this study is based on the historical analysis, from 1942 to today, of the provisions of the Italian civil code on financial statements. The study found that, although the historical cost criterion has always been and still is fundamental, the application of fair value is by no means extraneous to Italian accounting tradition.

This study aims to analyze the connections between integrated reporting (IR) and sustainability reporting (SR), in order to verify whether the IR can contribute to improving the SR prepared according to the Global Re­porting Initiative (GRI) standards. In particular, this study considers the top­ic from the point of view of the SR to understand the benefits that it could obtain from the information disclosed through the IR. To this end, the study analyzes the integrated reports relating to the 2021 financial year of two listed Italian companies operating in the financial sector. The research has highlighted that some areas of sustainability, especially relating to the eco­nomic and environmental dimensions, are actually enhanced by integrated reporting, while the information benefits regarding the social dimension are less evident. The study can help indicate the advantages and possible im­provements of the connections between SR and IR.

In regulating the financial statements, the amortization of goodwill represents a complex problem that requires a careful assessment of the economic conditions of the firm and their foreseeable evolution. This study aims to analyze the topic with specific regard to the Italian context, in order to identify the parameters useful for guiding the amortization processes, in compliance with the limits set by the legislation on financial statements. To this end, the study used a methodology based on the legal-economic analysis of the evolution of Italian legislation from 1882 to today and its effects on the economic valuations implied by amortization. The results show that the accounting for goodwill has changed over time, being characterized in the first phase by the prevalence of conservative accounting and by the consequent need to amortize goodwill in the shortest possible time. Subsequently, the accrual basis prevailed over conservatism, and today the basic rule is represented by the useful life of goodwill. The originality of this study lies in the multidisciplinary approach which, by combining the economic interpretation of the company with the legal rules on reporting, proposes an analysis model applicable in the practice of companies that prepare their financial statements according to the Civil Code.

Privileged information has significant importance to listed companies, given both the extent of the markets in which it is used and the relevant effects that it can produce on the prices of financial instruments. The term "privileged information" means information that has not yet been made known to the public, which, if disclosed, is able to affect significantly the prices of the securities of listed issuers. This article aims to prove that in many cases, the effects of privileged information can be adequately represented in financial statements, despite their "confidential" nature.For this purpose, this research proposes the existence of a relationship-which can be virtuous or vicious-between financial statements and privileged information. In order to demonstate this thesis, the author carried out an empirical survey concerning both the economic and the legal sector. For the first one, the research considered the price-sensitive information published by companies listed on the Italian Stock Exchange during the first half of 2018, and the result shows that a lot of privileged information is able to generate accounting effects; for the second one, the empirical survey analyzed some significant judgments passed by the Italian Court of Cassation in the 2000s which confirm the companies' violation of the duty to present privileged information in financial statements.