There are some characteristics of Italy, peculiarities of a country that despite the difficulties and changes does not deny itself. One of the areas in which this argument holds more than any other is the corporate world.
According to the corporate governance report published by Consob, families continue to be the entities that control companies listed on the Stock Exchange: two out of three have a family as the controlling shareholder, in percentage terms we are talking about 61% of the listed companies.
Add to this the fact that the structure of Italian SpA also remains very concentrated: in 83% of cases there is a shareholder who holds more than 50% of the capital. A model that characterizes 116 listed companies out of a total of 238. As for the others: 51 cases there is still a dominant influence while 32 companies are controlled by an agreement between shareholders.
The percentage of companies controlled by a pyramid group is in free fall, whose percentage drops to 19% from 38,5% in 1998 and the capitalization passes to 61,5% from 78%, while the number of so-called public companies (widely held companies) is growing, now representing 24% of the capitalization of market.
As far as institutional investors are concerned, their participation in the capital of companies listed on Piazza Affari concerns 94 companies with a share that has increased from 6,4% to approximately 7% of the capital). The increasingly high presence of foreign institutional investors (from 47 to 71) should be underlined. Finally, in the context of gender equality, it should be highlighted the increase in the number of women within the board of directors (27,6% against 11,6% in 2012. However, only 16 hold the role of managing director.
