women's enterprises, one third are corporations

Lombardy's entrepreneurial fabric is showing signs of dynamism, according to data from the Companies Register relating to the first quarter of 2024, despite a moderately negative business growth rate (-0.1%), and substantially in line with the national average of -0.2%. Data in hand, the business birth rate, although higher than the Italian average, cannot, in fact, compensate for the death rate, which is slightly lower only for joint-stock companies. More specifically, the ratio of new entrepreneurial initiatives to the total number of registered companies in Lombardy is 2%, compared to 1.8% nationally, the highest in the Peninsula with the exception of Trentino-Alto Adige. On the other hand, the business mortality rate is 2.1%, slightly higher than the Italian average of 2%, but in line with the values recorded in the other macro-divisions of the North. On the other hand, if only Lombardy's capital companies are taken into consideration, the picture changes. In this case, the birth rate of 1.8% is higher than the death rate (1.4%), guaranteeing growth of 0.4%.

Going down to territorial level, Monza e della Brianza (2.3%), Lecco (2.2%) and Brescia (2.1%) are the Lombardy provinces with the highest rate of new enterprises. But if we look at growth levels, the most consistent ones are recorded, after the aforementioned Monza and Brianza (0.03% growth), in Brescia (0.02%) and Milan (0.03%). The theme of female entrepreneurship deserves a specific focus, then, especially in a region like Lombardy, where the percentage of female businesses is among the lowest in Italy (19.2% compared to 22.3% nationally) and higher only than that of Trentino-Alto Adige. The only exceptions, at the end of December 2023, are the provinces of Sondrio, with an incidence of 23.9% of the total, and Pavia with 22.3%. With respect, however, to the typical characteristics of this category of enterprises, the Lombardy area does not differ significantly from the national picture, except for the greater incidence of female enterprises set up as joint stock companies. This legal form, in fact, concerns almost a third of Lombardy's female businesses, the highest figure in Italy (31.7% against the national figure of 25.9%). In line with the rest of the country, however, almost a third of them operate in the retail sector (31.2% against an average of 32.1%). This is also not surprising in light of the sectoral distribution of the total number of Lombardy companies recorded in the Companies Register in 2024. At sector level, in fact, the greatest weight in the local entrepreneurial system is represented by the "Wholesale and retail trade; repair of motor vehicles and motorbikes" sector, which accounts for 20.7% of the total, followed by "Construction" (15.3%) and "Manufacturing" (10.2%).