Italian Benefit Company (Società Benefit) and Default Risk: An Empirical Analysis of the Italian Context

This study examines the Italian benefit company (Società Benefit), a new legal business model established by Italian Law 208/2015, in force since 2016. This corporate form, which has not been extensively studied yet, aims to achieve dual objectives: the distribution of profits and the pursuit of one or more common benefit purposes. This requires a balancing of interests between shareholders and other stakeholders. Using an instrumental approach to stakeholder theory, the paper explores the effect of this corporate model on default risk, which is estimated by calculating the default spread. Our statistical analysis, which compares a sample of benefit companies with a sample of profit companies, reveals a significant negative relationship between the status of being a benefit company and the default risk. In other words, lenders seem to perceive benefit companies as less risky than comparable profit companies.