Proceedings of European Business Research Conference
Sheraton Roma, Rome, Italy, 5 - 6 September 2013, ISBN: 978-1-922069-29-0
Does Private Equity Improve Best Practices of Small Business?
Evidence from Italy
Marco Tutino* and Alberto Pezzi**
The contribution of private equity investors to the growth of small
medium firm (SMEs) has been for a long time investigated starting at the
beginning of the 1960s in the United States. An increasing number of
operations of opening up of share capital of SMEs with high growth
potential and problems related to entrepreneurship have been
investigated, underlying the interest of the topic in the literature of last
thirty years.
This paper is focused on the contribution of private equity investors on
the adoption of best practices for SME in Italy, a market characterized
by a large number of small firms mainly recognized as family business,
so that with a “low quality” of corporate governance. In particular,
considering a sample of backed firms, the paper provides evidences on
the contribution of a long term relationship between small firms, with
high growth potential but low level of professionalization, and private
equity investors. Results are shown.
JEL Codes: G24, G32, M14, M21
*Dr. Marco Tutino, Department of Business Studies, Roma Tre University,
Italy. Email : marco.tutino@uniroma3.it
**Dr. Alberto Pezzi, Department of Business Studies, Roma Tre University,
Italy. Email: alberto.pezzi@uniroma3.it