Corporate governance and internal auditing of food and beverage companies in Piedmont

This study focuses on corporate governance and internal auditing of companies belonging to the food and beverage sector in Piedmont, a region in the North-West of Italy. It concentrates in particular on Private Limited Companies and on Limited Liability Companies adopting traditional administrative and control systems. We have chosen the region of Piedmont because it has always had a crucial role in Italy for the development of the food and beverage industry. The choice of focusing on the topic of corporate governance and internal auditing is linked to the fact that the Italian system differs from that of other countries and has changed dramatically over the past few years and is continuing to evolve. In addition, in a period of economic crisis mal-governance is likely to occur, that is to say cases in which boards are not doing what they are supposed to do. Consequently, this research has several aims: first of all we want to monitor the impact of some recent reforms and Decree-Laws of 2012 and 2014 on the companies of the sample, by analysing how many companies in the period between 2013 and 2014 decided to rely on a board of auditors or on a sole auditor, if they are Limited Liability Companies; secondly we aim at evaluating which entity carried out the statutory audit and finally we study the structure of corporate governance of the companies of the sample, in terms of number of people involved and gender diversity. All data are extracted from AIDA database.