Food & Beverage Female’ companies financial strategies: How their choices influence the crises’ reaction?

Purpose: The agri-food sector is one of the most important in Europe, taking into account employment and financial performance (Hirsch and Gschwandtner, 2013). Although crises occurred, this sector has always had an anti-cyclical trend because of the growth of the food and beverage demand (European Parliament, 2019). Even today, albeit the global pandemic due to Covid-19, has deeply proved many enterprises, Food & Beverage (F&B) sub-sector has shown stability and resilience. In particular, F&B had positive performance connected to the production of the registered PDO (Protected Designation of Origin) and PGI (Protected Geographical Indication) products which can be considered as Made in Italy products that drive the Italian economy and exportation (ISMEA, 2020). The work analyses the financial structure of Italian SMEs belonging to the Food & Beverage, to realise if the different gender ownership could influence financial policies, as previous studies focused on another sector have already shown (Kozubíková et al., 2017; Cesaroni and Sentuti, 2016). The paper aims to understand if (and eventually how and why) the owner’s gender can affect the preferences about financing sources and, in which way these choices had influenced the reaction at the worldwide crises. Design: To reach the goal, an empirical analysis is performed on a sample of F&B Italian Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs). In the first step of the work, the distinction between female and male ownership is done; in the second phase, the financial companies’ structure is explored, using ratio analysis, a method that has been already exploited to evaluate it in other sectors (De Martini, 2018). The data are collected by AIDA, a financial database powered by Bureau Van Dijk, which contains the balance sheet data of all the Italian firms (Pederzoli and Torricelli, 2010). The time period considered is 2013-2019. Originality: This article explores firms operating in a sector that, even if has been damaged and strongly proved by the pandemic, revealed a big resilience; in fact, agri-food in general, and F&B in particular, is still characterized by a high level of employment and great relevance in GDP composition. In addition, although other research has already investigated the relationship between the financial structure and the owner’s gender, this type of study has not interested yet the agri-food companies. Practical implication: The results of this analysis could be useful to agents belonging to the agri-food industry to support the decision-making about the financial structure, also in a period of uncertainty or economic crisis. In addition, it could be an opportunity for both SMEs to explore new typologies of financing sources and for investors to take into account the different approaches to financial decisions between male and female companies' management.