Abstract
This paper presents an empirical and theoretical analysis of the financialization of companies and the diffusion of shareholder value maximization in Italy. Unlike the anglo-saxon contexts, financial accumulation and short-termism in Italy are not a consequence of institutional investors’ activism: Italian capitalism is still a holigarchic family capitalism, and few blockholders are in control of Italian large firms. Financialization of companies and the orientation to maximize shareholder value in Italy are rather the outcome of isomorphic processes, supported by institutional, normative and cultural transformations occurred since 1980s: reforms of finance, company and labour law, the privatization of state firms, the diffusion of market-oriented accounting and anglo-saxon theories of firms. All these processes are analyzed in the paper, together with the empirical evidences of the financialization of Italian companies.
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