The remuneration of business managers: characteristics and effects on strategies and results of the enterprise.

The thesis provides an overview over the great variety of theories concerning the correlation between the remuneration of managers and the overall performance of the companies of which they manage and shape the future. The work wants to underline the strong effect that the CEO of a company can have over company life and to clarify the importance of remuneration as an instrument to attract retain and motivate top managers in their guiding role. This objective is not trivial since the manager is invested with the power of taking important decisions on the behalf of the entire company, and therefore of all his internal and external stakeholders, acting substantially as an agent. Consequently, he should protect and act in the interest of his principals but in this activity, he could be tempted to enact opportunistic and self-interesting behaviours to have higher personal returns. At this point and effective remuneration structure in fundamental do deter these behaviours and induce managers to keep all stakeholders’ interests into consideration while taking important decisions. According to most important theories a balanced remuneration structure, that include both fixed and variable form of remuneration is the starting point for creating an effective instrument for stakeholder to align the managers’ objective to their own interest. Compensation is not the only a tool to attract, retain and motivate executive talent, but it’s clearly an important, and increasingly visible, part of executive talent management and decisions about how company leaders are compensated offer shareholders and other stakeholders a window on corporate governance. The research carried out has the aim of providing a picture of the Italian panorama of the remuneration policies and best practices and by underlying trends in the solutions adopted. The work wants to provide an empirical proof of the correlation and effectiveness of these policies. The analysis is based on a panel of listed companies on the FTSE MIB and Small Cap index and propose a correlations analysis among the remuneration structure of CEOs of these companies and some indexes that depict the strategic choices and financial performance of the companies.