Review of the validity of personal guarantees and differentiated protection between consumers and professional guarantors

By judgment no. 2442/2025, published on 6 November 2025, the Court of Genoa decided a case concerning several personal guarantees, drawing a distinction between the protection afforded to guarantors who qualify as consumers and that applicable to professional guarantors.

The Court first examined the challenges to the validity of the guarantees, ruling out that the templates used could be traced back to the standard wording criticised in the well‑known antitrust decisions. The Judge observed that the guarantors had not provided “any circumstance capable of showing that the contractual scheme used (…) was the result of an anti‑competitive agreement”, and referred to the most recent case‑law on the point.

The Court held that the guarantees had an entrepreneurial purpose, stressing that they were “aimed at facilitating access to financing” for the beneficiary company, and thus excluded the applicability of consumer protection rules for the professional guarantors.

For that reason, the Court rejected the challenges raised by the professional guarantors in relation to the underlying finance agreements. The Judge reaffirmed the need for specific proof of the defects alleged and the principle whereby the rules governing loan agreements do not require the production of an amortisation schedule for the contract to be valid.

Cassinelli Studio Legale assisted the creditor company with a team comprising Nicola Cassinelli and Michela Rosina.