Ricerc@Sapienza

The essay examines `financial instruments' as provided in articles 2346, par. 6 and 2411, par. 3 of the italian civil code with regard to their specic regulation following the 2003 company law reform. The author argues that they could be interpreted as an autonomous security category, whose nature and conceptual boundary should be investigated through a comparison with the regulation of shares and bonds of joint stock companies.