Use and Abuse of Privileged Information in Italian Listed Companies

Privileged information has significant importance to listed companies, given both the extent of the markets in which it is used and the relevant effects that it can produce on the prices of financial instruments. The term “privileged information” means information that has not yet been made known to the public, which, if disclosed, is able to affect significantly the prices of the securities of listed issuers. This article aims to prove that in many cases, the effects of privileged information can be adequately represented in financial statements, despite their “confidential” nature. For this purpose, this research proposes the existence of a relationship—which can be virtuous or vicious—between financial statements and privileged information. In order to demonstate this thesis, the author carried out an empirical survey concerning both the economic and the legal sector. For the first one, the research considered the price-sensitive information published by companies listed on the Italian Stock Exchange during the first half of 2018, and the result shows that a lot of privileged information is able to generate accounting effects; for the second one, the empirical survey analyzed some significant judgments passed by the Italian Court of Cassation in the 2000s which confirm the companies’ violation of the duty to present privileged information in financial statements.