The New Italian Legislation on Corporate Governance and Business Crisis. The Impact of Covid – 19 on SMEs and the Recent Rules to Mitigate the Effects

The economic challenges of recent years have been accompanied by numerous and complex economic and social crises, the last of which is caused by the spread of coronavirus COVID-19 – and is convergent in nature, the effects of which are felt in all spheres of society. The COVID-19 pandemic poses serious challenges for politicians and preconditions for an empirical analysis of the direct and indirect consequences of the pandemic for the development of the global economy. As part of the business crisis, Italian legislation is based on the principles of the 2019 EU legal framework, which include legal regulation for the management of economic entities, which allows to anticipate the business crisis, avoiding bankruptcy and improving the market. Legal regulation of the financial crisis contributes to the preservation of production capacity and employment, reduces the possibility of creating non-performing loans, which can negatively affect the balance sheets of banking institutions. A study by the Bank of Italy demonstrates the possibilities of avoiding insolvency if companies anticipate a business crisis by following bankruptcy deflation procedures, such as debt restructuring agreements and agreements with creditors. COVID-19 has led to a significant reduction in world GDP. Governments have different financial means to reduce the negative effects of the pandemic, but all consider the current economic moment exceptional, trying to postpone and mitigate the implementation of bankruptcy of many companies and enterprises in case of failure of legal systems. The results of the study show that the global recession will continue, and no country will avoid strengthening the legal regulation of administrative and accounting management, regardless of the strategy to mitigate the effects of the pandemic. The paper forms the opinion that today's events require a coordinated multinational political response to the pandemic.