An Overview about Italian companies facing the financial and economic crisis. A cultural revolution.

Since 2007 a financial crisis has hit economies. Each nation identified tools to help companies face numerous daily difficulties. This paper identifies some intermediate solutions from purely contractual (informal) arrangements for debt rescheduling between debtor and creditors to formal reorganisation or liquidation procedures. This techniques form a continuum based on the degree of judicial intervention and the degree of formality in general. Italian bankruptcy law has been recently modified to introduce: recovery and resolution planning. Formerly, the main aim of Italian bankruptcy and business recovery used to be the protection of creditors; now the goal is claiming priority to safeguard companies and reduce their difficulties. The government recognise that difficult situations can be solved in much the same way as private issues. The phenomena is relevant as in the first six months of application, the number of pre-insolvency agreements submitted to the Italian courts have been more than doubled.