Commissione Nazionale per le Società e la Borsa (more commonly know by its acronym CONSOB) or Italian Securities and Exchange Commission is the government authority of Italy

Italy

Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...

 responsible for regulating the Italian securities market. This includes the regulation of the Italian stock exchange the Borsa Italiana

Borsa Italiana

The Borsa Italiana S.p.A., based in Milan, is Italy's main stock exchange. It was privatised in 1997 and is a part of the London Stock Exchange Group plc since 2007. In 2005, the companies listed on the Borsa were worth US$890 billion...

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History

The Italian Securities and Exchange Commission (CONSOB) was founded 1974 through legislation merging the functions and jurisdictions that until then had been part of the Italian Ministry of Treasury. This was primarily power to monitor the securities markets.

Over time CONSOBs powers and responsibilities have expanded significantly.

In 1983 a new law extended its jurisdiction to protecting public savings, and two years later CONSOB received juridical personality and autonomy.

In 1991, it was attributed powers to audit securities brokerage companies and monitor insider trading.

Responsibilities and functions

CONSOB carries out several functions:

• it regulates the investment services and operations of intermediaries, the reporting obligations of companies listed on regulated markets, and the solicitation of investment from the public;
• it authorizes the operations of regulated markets, the publication of prospectuses, the centralized management of financial instruments, and enrolment in registers;
• it monitors the operations of market management companies, the transparency and orderly conduct of trading, and the transparency and fairness of the conduct of intermediaries and financial representatives;
• it penalizes any unfair conduct by the above-mentioned parties;
• it checks the information provided to the market by entities that solicit investment from the public, as well as the information contained in the accounting documents of listed companies.

Orginisation structure

CONSOB is headed by a collegiate body consisting of a chairman (as at Jan 2011 Giuseppe Vegas; his predecessors include Lamberto Cardia, Luigi Spaventa, Enzo Berlanda, and Franco Piga) and four members, appointed by a decree of the President of the Republic on the proposal of the President of the Council of Ministers, who remain in office for seven years and their term is non-renewable. The organizational structure includes a central management committee under which there are eleven departments (issuers, intermediaries, markets, etc.) and thirty-nine divisions (company controls, public tender offers and ownership structure, financial representatives monitoring and register, insider trading, derivatives markets, etc.), with offices in Rome and Milan.