The Corporate Governance in a local firm of public services: the example Amet Trani

This paper, after an analysis of literature and a first part where the local public services companies are generally analyzed has the aim of studying the example of AMET Trani, public services company which operates in the field of energy and transports. The AMET, like all the other public services companies, is living in these last few years a transitino period, following to the local public Transport reform and above all after the transformation from special company to a shareholding, has put itself several questions about its long-term future. In fact, if from one side only with the liberalization of services market and the opening to private companies in public firms participation, it’s possibile to increase its value and to better the performances quality, by making them more convenient for all the citizens, from the other side the way to privatizations and liberalizations complains about the presence of conflicting interests, of vetos, of resistances, which influence the local companies management. From the case we’re studying, the peculiarity of local public company, which requires a particular configuration of Governance systems, because if, from a juridical-formal point of view the adopted referring picture is that of a whatever society, from a more traditional point of view, instead, the public shareholder, the public company, maintains the society control through possession of majority of capital stock or of other mechanisms (golden share) which define it as referring member. The public body, in its role of public shareholder, grants, therefore, great importance not only to the territorial dimension, but also to the promotion and safeguarding of managed community interests, with respect, instead, to the industrial dimension, that is of company development for supply chain business.