Investigation of risk management and risk disclosure practices of Italian listed local utilities

Local utility services deeply affect the overall quality of life of a coun- try’s population. For this reason service providers should pay strong atten- tion to risk management practices, but also to the external communication of both the risk exposure and the risk responses. Following a qualitative methodology, this paper aims at exploring the risk management and risk disclosure practices of five Italian listed local utility companies combining two research methods: questionnaire and doc- ument analysis. Results show that these Italian listed local utilities are characterized by different maturity levels of risk management practices, which are not exten- sively disclosed in public reports and documents. Interestingly, the link be- tween the level of disclosure and maturity of risk management practices is confirmed just for those companies that seem to be the most mature in terms of risk management.