Empirical analysis of the capital structure of Italian companies throughout the 2008-2009 financial crisis

This thesis aims to ascertain the effect of global financial crisis on the capital structure of medium, large and listed Italian companies. This dissertation presents a structured and precise analysis on leverage of Italian companies for the period from 2005 to 2014, then dismantled into maturity, short-term debt, long-term debt; for listed companies, a further breakdown allowed a further understanding of the substitution effect from banks borrowing to corporate bonds. Furthermore, we will narrow the focus to subsamples of different company’s sizes, allowing to reveal peculiarities of peer size firms. Overall, the results will suggest a significant reduction in leverage from 2009, mainly driven by a consistent decrease in short-term debt which is greater than the reduction in long-term debt, leading maturity to increase.