Patrizia Riva

The ability of the turnaround index to assess going concern assumptions: evidence from its application to Italian listed companies

In times of crisis, an entrepreneur often must decide whether to liquidate the company and the whole business or to renew it by activating a turnaround process. A tool increasingly used in international practice is the turnaround index, which can determine whether a company can continue its activities in the future according to the going concern assumption, which is the index measured as a function of the economic and financial performance of the company. This measure can take values between 0.1, for satisfactory performance and therefore unlikely to turn around, and 0.9, for unsatisfactory performance and therefore a high propensity to turnaround. The index determines whether there is a higher or lower risk for a company to enter into crisis. The aim of this paper is to test the effectiveness of the turnaround index in assessing the turnaround urgency by choosing a sample of the Italian companies.

An overview Italian companies and the financial and economic crisis: a cultural revolution

Since 2007 a financial crisis has hit economies. Each nation identified tools to help companies face numerous daily difficulties. This paper identifies some intermediate solutions from purely contractual (informal) arrangements for debt rescheduling between debtor and creditors to formal reorganisation or liquidation procedures. This techniques form a continuum based on the degree of judicial intervention and the degree of formality in general. Italian bankruptcy law has been recently modified to introduce: recovery and resolution planning. Formerly, the main aim of Italian bankruptcy and business recovery used to be the protection of creditors; now the goal is claiming priority to safeguard companies and reduce their difficulties. The government recognise that difficult situations can be solved in much the same way as private issues. The phenomena is relevant as in the first six months of application, the number of pre-insolvency agreements submitted to the Italian courts have been more than doubled.

Women in the boardroom: the Italian experience of law vs. embedded tradition

Italys law 120/2011 established boardroom gender quotas. Since then, an important goal has been reached: listed and state-owned companies must fulfil a compulsory percentage of women in boards of directors and in statutory boards. European standards are even more favourable in that they predict that by 2020, women must constitute at least of 40% of board memberships. This paper illustrates effects and changes of the new law for Italian companies and analyses the cultural debate that has strongly enhanced the Italian scene. Various approaches, both traditional and ground-breaking, are analysed. The paper also describes the presence of women in the boardrooms in other European countries to support a comparative analysis.

ACCOUNTING FOR DEBT RESTRUCTURING IN THE CURRENT CRISIS: ITALIAN EXPERIENCE BY ITALIAN LEGAL CONDITIONS

Since 2007 a financial crisis has hit economies generating inevitable consequences on Italian Companies solvency level. This paper identifies some intermediate solutions purely contractual arrangements for debt rescheduling between debtor and creditors introduced by the Bankruptcy Reform, which considers: recovery and resolution planning ,restructuring agreement, pre-insolvency agreements with creditors. To solve the crisis it is required the adoption of appropriate procedures aiming at the fair presentation in the financial statements. For this reasons Italian Accounting Entity, (OIC) on July 2011 issued a new document OIC 6, “Accounting Principles” which aimed to prescribe the accounting treatment and disclosures, produced by the debt restructuring. Finally, this paper highlights how the OIC n. 6 philosophy has emphasizes the public interest in preserving the firm as an economic value to the community .