General meeting-related processes in Italy: The role of listed companies, intermediaries and central securities depositories in light of recent EU developments

Abstract

Over recent years — starting with the preliminary report of the 'Committee of Wise Men' — the post-trading industry has been at the centre of unprecedented attention in the European Union (EU). This paper provides an overview of the current EU initiative in the field, including the Code of Conduct for Clearing and Settlement, then goes on to describe the Italian system for general meetings (GM)-related corporate action management, under which common standards for electronic processing have been jointly developed by issuers and intermediaries, in order to exploit straight-through processing (STP).