Italian Benefit Companies and Its Brothers. Towards a Transformation of Company Law in the Sense of Sustainability?

In the last decades, we have been looking at a meaningful change in the purposes of business law as a whole. In many national systems, profit is not seen as the exclusive purpose of a company anymore. It is often to be balanced with a broader community interest (benefit), taking into account not only the returns due to shareholders, but also the impact of company’s decisions over a large amount of stakeholders. This kind of transformation is a consequence of the even-increasing influence of so-called “Corporate Social Responsibility” over the classic firm theories. In addition to that, the concept of “entrepreneur” itself is currently undergoing a shift of paradigm, with the increasing importance of the “sharing economy”. Both benefit purposes and sharing economy are faces of the medal of an increased sustainability in the “new” business law.

Italian new regulation introducing the so-called “Benefit companies” in the early 2016 is a clear example of such a trend. In this paper, I will describe such a company form, by comparing it with the usual profit companies and questioning whether the new Italian benefit companies actually add something to the previous situation. In addition, I will provide readers with an overall analysis of the reforms in the third sector in Italian partnerships law (the reformed social enterprises) and of the most recent developments in the field of sustainable company law at a European stage.