Restrictions on Shareholder's Distribution in the COVID-19 Crisis: Insights on Corporate Purpose

Emerging restrictions on shareholders’ distributions –in the form of legislative bans, market pressure or supervisory measures –in the context of the Covid-19 crisis suggest a shift in the company’s purpose. As for banks and insurance companies,recent measures adopted by the supervisory authorities, from this viewpoint, seem to go even further, since they emphasise the need that banks and insurance companies must ensure, as their main corpore purpose, that both banking intermediation and insurance intermediation can effectively continue.