Le motivazioni dell'affidamento volontario del controllo contabile al collegio sindacale o al revisore esterno nelle società per azioni non quotate in Italia: un'indagine empirica

This study analyses the issue of monitoring in Italian unlisted joint stock companies, devoting mainly its attention to the modalities of entrusting the accounting auditing activity that have been renewed by the introduction of the Company Law Reform since 2004. Joint stock companies have been allowed to entrust accounting auditing optionally to an external auditor or to the board of auditors, whenever the company is unlisted or does not belong to a listed group, or is not specifically compelled by mandatory sectoral rules, or has not to draw up the consolidated balance sheet. More specifically this research tries to find out which are the determinants of the entrusting accounting auditing to the external auditor without any mandatory premise. The study intends to verify whether the choice of the external auditor may be interpreted as a better corporate governance device, identifying the determinants of this choice in comparison with the board of auditors’ one. In order to verify these assumptions the study implements two samples of unlisted joint stock companies, differently entrusting the accounting audit without mandatory premises. Successively the economic and financial features of the companies of these two samples companies, their ownership structures and fundamentals have been investigated to highlight the determinants of the choice.