La consulenza in materia di investimenti

The thesis offers a critical analysis of the regulation of investment advice in Italy. After discussing the main issues underlying the advisor-client relationship, such as informational asimmetries and conflicts of interests, the study points out the shortcomings of the traditional, transparency-based regulatory approach. The findings of behavioural finance suggest that a stronger regulatory intervention could bring to a more effective client protection, and this should be done imposing more nuanced fiduciary duties on the advisor. The evolution of Italian investment advice regulation is then analysed in the light of the different legal strategies employed by the regulator. The study finds that the Italian financial market regulator has played a key role in shaping the rules on financial advice, but the resulting legal regime has often been poor or inconsistent. The enactment of MiFID in Italy brought seismic changes to the legal notion of investment advice and to its regulatory regime, with mixed results. The use of a transparency-based regulatory paradigm is less frequent now, although the current approach is not sufficiently focused on conduct of business rules to provide an adequate degree of investor protection. Moreover, it is argued that if investment advice is structurally tainted by conflict of interests, it is not really helpful for the client, and that the law should promote the diffusion of effectively independent investment advice.