Corporate governance and performance in turnaround: A synthetic index

Abstract

In this work we carried out an empirical research on a panel of companies in turnaround SMEs, venture capital backed, with the objective of deepening the analysis: Firstly, if warning signs were submitted from firms in turnaround. Secondly, we tried to verify the role played by the Corporate Governance in restructuring, with the definition of an index of good Governance for SMEs (scG) and Performance ad hoc index (scP). Thirdly, the definition of a Synthetic Index (SI) aggregates the two kinds of information: Corporate Governance Quality and Performance. We conducted an analysis of the balance sheets of the companies in turnaround participated by a turnaround fund, in the years 2004 and 2009. In relation to the total number of firms involved in turnaround in the period in question, which were 26 in total; it was possible to reconstruct the historic trend only for 12 of them, for the others the balance sheets could not be found.In conclusion, it can be noted that the analysis of important aspects of management through the development of Z-score, and scG, scP, and SI can summarize complex concepts into a number and allows for comparisons between situations that are not readily comparable in terms of accounting. This study can suggest the definition of Corporate Governance Index for SME in critical situations. This study offers some ideas about the opportunity of stimulating the SME to introduce the Corporate Governance System spread to listed companies