Derived from the renowned multi-volume International Encyclopaedia of Laws, this practical analysis of the law of business formations in Italy provides quick and easy guidance on a variety of corporate and partnership considerations such as mergers, rights and duties of interested parties, stock exchange rules, labour laws, and takeovers. Lawyers who handle transnational business will appreciate the explanation of local variations in terminology and the distinctive concepts that determine practice and procedure. A general introduction covering historical background, definitions, sources of law, and the effect of international private law is followed by a discussion of such aspects as types of formation, capital, shares, management, control, liquidation, mergers, takeovers, holding companies, subsidiaries, and taxation. Big companies, various types of smaller entities, and partnerships are all covered in turn. These details are presented in such a way that readers who are unfamiliar with specific terms and concepts in varying contexts will fully grasp their meaning and significance. Thorough yet practical, this convenient volume puts the information necessary for corporations to compete effectively at the user’s fingertips. An important and practical tool for business executives and their legal counsel interested in engaging in an international partnership or embarking on corporate expansion, this book will prove a valuable time-saving tool for business and legal professionals alike. Lawyers representing parties with interests in Italy will welcome this very useful guide, and academics and researchers will appreciate its value in the study of comparative business law.

Groups of Companies in the EEC.

This book presents a comprehensive study on how twenty-three countries have approached the issue of company groups. In addition to detailed profiles of each country’s legislation, written by some of the most respected experts in the field, the book also presents a general overview and offers readers an in-depth, up-to-date and highly practical comparative analysis of the company group phenomenon in connection with national legal regimes. As such, the book is a must-read for all those seeking a deeper understanding of how company groups are viewed and regulated around the globe.

Globalization has led to growing labour fragmentation and widening of gaps in social protection. Although the enterprise is increasingly expected to be socially responsible, in actuality extreme worker inequalities and social dumping have become ubiquitous worldwide. This volume – the first to focus attention on the ‘theory of the firm’ as it reveals itself in today’s world from a multidisciplinary perspective – underscores the necessity to rebuild a new scientifically controlled paradigm that acknowledges and regulates the dimension of power in the functioning of the organization. In their contributed essays, nineteen renowned scholars in labour law and industrial relations rethink the firm, its conception, its value, and its regulation, analysing such aspects as the following: – labour-management relations issues that arise when companies go global but workers remain local; – the firm as a social construction; – the continuing necessity for collective bargaining; – concealment of the employment relationship under the guise of self-employment; – concealment of the real employer behind figureheads and shell companies; – social welfare effects of outsourcing; – the company’s interaction with the network of suppliers and with local education processes; – determining who actually carries responsibility towards workers; – overcoming companies’ drive to enter the global market in response to national regulation; – realizing the notion of ‘duty of care’; – mechanisms of participation of workers in the management of the enterprise; and – the persistent limitations that women face in the workplace, even when worker participation is advocated. With attention to innovative developments in Germany, Italy, Japan, and other countries, analyses include case studies of specific companies as well as case law, in particular the European Court of Justice’s jurisprudence in matters of collective dismissals, seconded workers, and public contracts. In their head-on tackling of the fragmentation and blurring of social responsibility in enterprise organization, these important essays propose a view of the enterprise as a factor in a new ‘constitutionalisation’ of labour that shifts employment protection from single legal entities to the network’s economic activity, thus realigning the legal boundaries of the enterprise with its economic reality. As a compelling investigation of how a satisfactory implementation of labour standards in the fragmented enterprise can be guaranteed, this book will be studied by entrepreneurs, managers, consultants, corporate lawyers, judges, human rights experts, and trade unionists, and will be welcomed by academics and researchers in industrial relations and labour law.

Since the last edition of this pre-eminent work five years ago, the European framework in the international setting has substantially changed. Numerous critical developments have highlighted shortcomings in the European structure that seems incapable, in its present complexity, of resolving the apparently intractable problems it confronts. This book's highly respected author is uncompromising: either we have the courage to establish profound, constitutional reforms aimed at renewing the European Union in the collective imagination or we risk contenting ourselves with merely an economic community with a far-from-ideal single market where even the four basic freedoms guaranteeing all actors, individuals and enterprises, are put under discussion. This revision follows the successful format of the previous editions. As before, the author's intensive discussion brilliantly disentangles the complex interrelations among a vast array of economic factors. As a general update, the new edition takes into account such major developments as the mass immigration phenomenon, effects of Brexit on EU laws and policies, and the OECD's project on base erosion and profit shifting (BEPS). Ongoing matters covered include the following: • issues surrounding the euro's sustainability, especially as revealed in ECJ case law; • lack of power of the ECB and other EU institutions in fixing the euro's exchange rate; • the potential EU contribution to reform of the IMF's organization and substantive rules; • ECJ case law on conflicts in the transfer of seat and cross-border mergers; • the role of the European Commission in the regulation of international trade; • limits to the advantages lawfully acquired by multinational enterprises; • transfer pricing in intragroup transactions; • EU supervision of banking groups and international banking cooperation; • corporate social responsibility' and 'codes of conduct'; and • State aid between competition law and the non-discrimination principle. Emphasizing the complex legal regime affecting undertakings in Europe today, Professor Santa Maria presents a thoroughgoing legal analysis of the prominence of corporate and business enterprises in what many theorists see as the intrinsic 'internationality' of social activity in the current era. Previous editions have been applauded for their unremitting emphasis on rules introduced on the basis of multilateral agreements of an unprecedented reach, within which both States and undertakings are made to recognize and to deal with one another. In the new edition, this perspective, daunting in its scope and breadth, is maintained and expanded, providing a synthesizing and enlightening analysis that will be of immeasurable value to all parties with an interest — academic, juridical, or administrative — in this very important area of law.