Mercato, concorrenza e governance nelle imprese pubbliche che gestiscono servizi locali - Local public services in Italy are subject to an ongoing reform process that started with the legal privatisation of the activities. The new local capitalism is becoming more and more important and gives rise to different problems. Some of them are analysed in the present paper, namely 1) the extent of the activities of these public owned but privately regulated firms, sometimes difficult to include in any notion of public services; 2) the competition rules to be applied on the market and for the market in their different activities; 3) the corporate governance problems arising from the conflicts between the political interests of the public owners and the efficiency objectives of the managers. After a short review of the more recent policy interventions in the field we conclude that they couldn’t yet solve the above mentioned problems, even though they move in the right direction.