Going Dark in Italy: Empirical Evidence on Last Decade

Abstract

The purpose of the paper is to examine the characteristics and motives of Italian voluntary Public to Private transactions (PTPs) between 2001 and 2011 observing a final sample of more than 53 industrial companies, compared with a control sample of 106 companies still listed in the period. Main goal is to assess if any signals can predict a going private operation for listed companies in Italy and, if positive, Italian market shows differences with previous investigation in Continental Europe and US. Most of going private research is based on US samples, starting from 1980s, and on UK sample, both characterize by distinctive features related to governance (i.e., degree of openness of share capital, ability to control shareholder capital with low percentage). On the contrary, Italian market is closely characterized by presence of large shareholder, as family owner or historical owner, as observed for a large number of listed companies in Continental Europe (Faccio and Lang, 2002). After having briefly reviewed main contribution from most recent literature, this work provides test of different hypotheses trying to explain the delisting phenomenon In Italy considering a wide range of motivations. Practical implications of results achieved can help to highlight on Public to Private phenomenon in Italy, still not enough observed considering the high number of delisted companies in the last decade relating to a relative small number of listed companies.