News · Accounting · – October 2026
The Organismo Italiano di Valutazione (OIV, the Italian valuation standard setter), a foundation promoted by AIAF, ANDAF, Assirevi, Borsa Italiana, the CNDCEC (National Council of Chartered Accountants) and Bocconi University, has completed its revision of the Principi italiani di valutazione (PIV, Italian Valuation Standards): the Board of Guarantors (Consiglio dei Garanti) has issued the 2026 edition, which replaces the 2015 edition and applies from 1 January 2027. The process began with the Exposure Draft published in December 2025, which set 30 June 2026 as the application date, later moved to 1 January 2027. The draft permitted voluntary early adoption and ruled out using the new standards to review valuations relating to earlier periods; it also aligned the standards with the International Valuation Standards (IVS) 2024. The final text can be consulted on the OIV website but not downloaded, and it is published in two volumes sold together: the Standards and the Razionale dei PIV 2026 (Basis for Conclusions). In the draft, the Standards are prescriptive, while the Basis for Conclusions, which gathers commentary, examples and appendices, is illustrative only; compliance with the PIV, which must be stated in the valuation report, is therefore measured against the first volume. The PIV are not made mandatory by statute and remain a technical benchmark applied on a voluntary basis. The Civil Code (codice civile, c.c.), by contrast, requires certain valuations to set out the criteria followed: the sworn report on contributions in kind or of receivables in joint-stock companies (art. 2343, first paragraph, c.c.) and in limited liability companies (art. 2465, first paragraph, c.c.) states the valuation criteria and certifies that the value of the assets contributed is at least equal to that attributed to them for the purposes of share capital and any share premium; the experts’ report on the fairness of the share exchange ratio in a merger states the method or methods followed, the resulting values and any valuation difficulties (art. 2501-sexies, first paragraph, c.c.).
The changes described below are those in the Exposure Draft and should be checked against the final text before they are applied. The types of engagement consistent with the PIV are reduced to three: valuation, financial fairness opinion (parere di congruità finanziaria) and review of another expert’s work (valuation review). The valuation opinion (parere valutativo) and the valuation calculation (calcolo valutativo), both provided for in the 2015 PIV, are excluded. Requirements are graded on three levels, expressed by “must”, “should” and “may”: what the expert must do has to be complied with for the valuation to be declared PIV-compliant, while non-mandatory requirements must still be considered by the expert in the light of the context and purpose of the engagement. The standards apply to valuations of any size, including very small businesses; where the expert faces objective limitations on the information available, they must be disclosed in the report. The bases of value include, among others, normal market value (valore normale di mercato), liquidation value (orderly, accelerated or forced) and discharge value of liabilities. The framework is organised in four parts (conceptual framework and general principles, the expert’s work, specific assets, particular applications) and covers businesses, intangible assets, financial instruments, plant and machinery, real estate and liabilities; the fourth part deals with valuations for specific purposes, such as financial reporting, and for corporate transactions such as acquisitions, mergers, demergers and contributions in kind. In our view, for engagements completed around the turn of the year, the engagement letter should state from the outset which edition of the PIV will be applied.
Summary note by the CommercialistiAvvocati network, based on specialised legal and practice sources. The text does not reproduce original contributions and does not constitute professional advice.