Board Composition and Interlocking Directorate Evolution as a Consequence of the Recent Financial Crises : Evidence from Italian Listed Companies

The recent systemic crisis that has affected the financial markets and real economies of major industrialized countries has had significant effects on the corporate governance and key organizational choices of large firms. In this context, the present study aims to verify whether the international crisis has significantly changed the structure of the interlocking directorate network that links large firms in the regulated Italian market. To this end, the first part of the paper presents an analysis of the evolution of corporate governance in the main European regulated markets through a comparative analysis of some synthetic statistical data observed at the end of the years 2006, 2008 and 2010. In the second part, after framing the concept of interlocking directorate in a theoretical perspective, we examine the evolution of the network of personal ties between large Italian listed companies in the period of observation (2006-2010) using Social Network Analysis