Title: The ability of the turnaround index to assess going concern assumptions: evidence from its application to Italian listed companies

Authors: Roberta Provasi; Patrizia Riva

Addresses: Department of Business Administration, Finance, Management and Law, Milan-Bicocca University, Via R. Bicocca degli Arcimboldi 8, 20126 Milan, Italy ' Department of Economics and Business Studies, Piemonte Orientale University, Via Perrone 18, 28100 Novara, Italy

Abstract: In times of crisis, an entrepreneur often must decide whether to liquidate the company and the whole business or to renew it by activating a turnaround process. A tool increasingly used in international practice is the turnaround index, which can determine whether a company can continue its activities in the future according to the going concern assumption, which is the index measured as a function of the economic and financial performance of the company. This measure can take values between 0.1, for satisfactory performance and therefore unlikely to turn around, and 0.9, for unsatisfactory performance and therefore a high propensity to turnaround. The index determines whether there is a higher or lower risk for a company to enter into crisis. The aim of this paper is to test the effectiveness of the turnaround index in assessing the turnaround urgency by choosing a sample of the Italian companies.

Keywords: turnaround index; going concern assumptions; Italy; going concerns; turnaround urgency; crisis forecast; crisis assessment; insolvency forecasting; forecasting models; company health; firm health; Z-score; modelling; economic performance; financial performance; firm performance.

DOI: 10.1504/GBER.2016.073309

Global Business and Economics Review, 2016 Vol.18 No.1, pp.54 - 81

Received: 19 Jun 2014
Accepted: 02 Oct 2014
Published online: 30 Nov 2015 *

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