Board Evaluation in Italian Listed Companies

Abstract

In the last decade performance evaluation of the Board of Directors has become a best practice at national and international level. Italy is an interesting area of analysis given the high concentration of ownership that characterizes companies, including listed companies. In this context the choices of governance that affect the level of disclosure, for which the expectation is to have a low level of disclosure on the practice of BE (Board Evaluation).The first purpose of this paper is to present a résumé on the state of the art in terms of BE for Italian listed companies at 31st December 2012, in terms of presence/absence of the practice of disclosure and its more or less extensive disclosure. The second objective is to highlight the modality of adoption of BE and the third is to analyze the relationship between the quality of BE (measured using as a proxy the disclosure on its setting up) and corporate governance. The results reveal there are few companies that use board evaluation and that there is a relationship between BE adoption and good governance and between the quality of BE and good governance.