Board of Directors in Italian Public Family Controlled Companies

This chapter aims to explore the features of the boards of directors in the publicly listed companies of the Italian stock exchange. It analyses the board along its classical three dimensions, that is, the composition, the structure, and the processes. The purpose is to understand if the family companies present specific characteristics with respect to the functioning of corporate boards. The analysis has been conducted over the 114 familycontrolled Italian listed companies, and focused mostly on the independence of the board of directors from the controlling family. Results indicated that in public family-controlled companies the compliance with the code prevails over their family nature in order to explain their board characteristics. Results showed some correlations between the board characteristics and the company stock performance. Nonetheless, no evidence was found that public family-controlled companies have strong specific characteristics descending from the family representation within the board of directors.