Financing the largest Italian manufacturing firms. Ownership, equity, and debt (1936-2001)

The study aims to reconstruct and analyse the financial structure of the largest manufacturing enterprises in Italy in the long run, focusing, on the one hand, on their strategies and, on the other hand, on their performance. Discussing the literature the chapter provides data on the capital structure (debt and equity) of the top 200 manufacturing firms (ranked by total assets) per benchmark years from 1936 to 2001, highlighting the impact of external funds on their corporate finance. The study analyses changes in their capital structure by sectors and by ownership (public and private) as well. It offers also a deeper analysis of the effect of the debt component on the two largest holdings (IRI and ENI) suggesting that their difficulties stemmed from macroeconomic shocks of the 1970s.