Part III Prospectus Liability and Litigation, 22 Italy
This chapter focuses on Italian law. Italian securities law refers to ‘prospectus’ as the document that has to be published when there is an offer to the public of transferable securities and units issued by collective investment undertakings of the closed-end type, an offer of any other type of financial product or, finally, a request for admission to trading on a regulated market. The prospectus is the document that is drafted in accordance with the EU Prospectus Regulation. The scope of Italian prospectus regulation is moreover wider than the scope of the EU Prospectus Regulation. Prospectus liability in Italy is today governed by specific rules that incorporate many of the issues that were debated by scholars and courts before the enactment of those specific statutory rules. Currently, the main issue seems to be whether those statutory rules express principles to be applied to all forms of material misstatements or omissions to the market, or are just a part of the general framework concerning liability to the market.