One-Man-Shows with Limited Liability - the Italian Flavour

The legislative steps implementing the regulations of the XII EEC Directive relating to Company Law into the Italian system of law have been completed since mid-April 1993, thus providing for the "Single Person Companies", a reform which had been presumed both more rapid and further reaching than that which has now been adopted.

The form which has been established to provide the unheard possibility of creating a separate legal entity, directed towards the management of a business, without having the individual owner of the same being liable for the debts of such entity, having so to answer in the case of the insolvency of the latter, is that of the "limited liability company with a single quota-holder", which, apart from creating a contradiction in terms, presents in the above regulations a series of traits which betray the very limited scope of this kind of entity and make it easy to predict that it will meet with reduced success.