Shareholder, who decides to continue with the company, can cause that they become per-sonally liable for its upcoming obligations. Creditors must lodge an appeal against the shareholder to get compensation for the harm they have suffered. The damage rules in Swedish company law are designed to utilize the company?s interest, that is, shareholders and other corporate members shall promote the interests of the company and not cause damage.The rules about compensation that shareholder obligates itself to are difficult to apply and are adapt to the specific cases. For a shareholder to be personally responsible in a real situation a company has to establish a subsidiary company, which is being driven undercapitalized, intended to benefit the shareholder.

A comparison of strategic alliances and mergers & acquisitions and their impact on shareholder value has been done. By using an event study methodology, the announcements of these strategic approaches has been analysed in order to understand which strategic approach affect shareholder value most favourably..

A contribution that is to be repaid and has been made by a shareholder should be considered disposed when the receiving company is declared bankrupt. Converting such a contribution to one that is not to be repaid should mean that the contribution is disposed to its marketvalue. It is then considered that the shareholder makes a new contribution that is not to be repaid. Hereby, the shareholder will probably make a capital loss, which should be deductible..

Shareholder value has its origin in the American corporate governance system and has been the subject of great debate over the last few decades. The proponents claim that it creates economic efficiency while the critics argue that maximization of shareholder value jeopardizes the long term survival of companies. However, the debate in Sweden already seems to have forgotten the question of how embedded the ideology really is and what´s leading its way. This study show that shareholder value has developed and been established in Swedish companies between 1995 and 2005. The study has found evidence that suggests that the development can primarily be linked to board networks and international exposure.

The purpose of this thesis is to examine and analyze the characteristics of the management control system private equity firms use to manage their portfolio companies. The thesis takes a share holder value perspective, and it is assumed that the goal of the management control system is to increase the shareholder value in the portfolio company. In a qualitative study two private equity firms and two portfolio companies, one for each private equity firm, were studied in detail. In total, nine in debt interviews were completed. The results from this study suggest that the characteristics of the control system are dependent on the surrounding context; the focus on shareholder value and the specific characteristics of the private equity industry shape the characteristics of the management control system.

It is a common view that companies should focus on building brands to increase profitability and stabilize cash flows. However, building and keeping brands alive is costly. Many firms spend large sums on branding only because they are supposed to, without knowing if they will actually gain from it. Up to date, there is limited convincing evidence that branding actually contributes to shareholder value creation. This thesis aims to investigate the relationship between brand strength and profitability and shareholder value.

The use of group contribution between consolidated firms is a common phenomenon in Sweden where taxation is not based on the return on the consolidated level but on the return on the individual firms. However, the process of handling the group contribution does not work without problems. This thesis analyzes three main issues where group contributions oppose the Swedish Companies Act. ? The Swedish Companies Act enacts the decision regarding group contributions to be made at a shareholder?s meeting.

This thesis investigates the effects of active ownership on the return on assets (ROA) of Swedish listed companies during the years 2003 to 2013. Active ownership is operationalized based on the probabilistic voting model that is used to calculate the minimum amount of shares the largest shareholder needs in order to possess control of a contested vote at the shareholder meeting. We study the three largest lists on the Nasdaq OMX Stockholm, having 1454 observations from 207 companies to test our hypothesis. The main result from the study is that there's a significant positive relationship between active ownership and ROA during the investigated period. The active owners' relative strength also proves to have a significant positive relationship to ROA..

On the 26th of January 2010, the Supreme Administrative Court in Sweden gave five rulings which greatly affect the possibility to keep a close company within a family by transferring the ownership of the company to the next generation. The five rulings concern the interpretation of the prerequisite, same or similar activity, which can be found in section 57, clause 4 of the Swedish Income Tax Act.    The prerequisite is fulfilled when an entire or parts of a business is transferred to another close company and the receiving company?s business activity is within the framework of the transferring company?s business activity or when the companies have a similar connection. Depending on which shares that are being evaluated, the prerequisite can refer to both the shares in the receiving or the transferring company. When the prerequisite is fulfilled, a standardized amount of the business income will be taxed as capital gains and the surplus will be taxed as earned income.

In 2007 the Swedish government appointed a commission of inquiry with the task to submit a proposal of reduction in the requirement of a minimum legal capital for private limited liability companies. The commission of inquiry?s main proposal involved a reduction to SEK 50,000 compared to the prevailing SEK 100,000. Following a complementary proposal from the Justice Department suggesting a reduction to SEK 1, this paper aims at providing an understanding of the function and purpose of a minimum legal capital and the consequences that follows from an abolition of the statutory capital requirement. The thesis concludes that the legal capital?s main purpose is that of a standard contract internalizing the shareholder?s risk in business.

AbstractThis bachelor thesis deals with the close company rules in chapter 56-57 within the Swedish income tax law (IL). The purpose of this thesis is to analyse the outsider rule in 57:5 IL. If a shareholder or a family member works or have worked actively within the company within the fiscal year or the last five fiscal years then the partner has qualified shares and is to be taxed according to the special closed company rules.If an outsider, directly or indirectly, is a significant shareholder within the company, and directly or indirectly, are entitled to dividends then an active partner only has qualified shares if there is special reasons. When making the assessment regard must be made to conditions under the fiscal year or the last five fiscal years. There is special reason not to apply the rule if there are agreements regarding how the profit should be split or cross-ownerships between companies.If a taxpayer can show that an outsider own 30 percent of the closed company and has a right to dividends and there is no special reason to why the rule should not be applied then the outsider rule is applicable.

Nyckelord: CSR, SRI, shareholder value och Etiska placeringar Problemformulering: Hur ser förvaltarna och investerarna på framtiden för CSR/SRI och kommer deras jobb som förvaltare och investerare att förändras efter kriserna som varit? Syfte: Syftet med studien är att undersöka hur CSR och SRI har och kommer att utvecklas på den svenska investeringsmarknaden.Metod: För att besvara studiens syfte och frågeställning valdes en kvalitativ ansats. I uppsatsen intervjuas investerare som arbetar dagligen med CSR/SRI investeringar. I uppsatsen används artiklar inom området för socialt hållbara investeringar. De svar som erhålls av respondenterna i intervjuerna granskas, reflekteras samt jämförs med tillgänglig forskning på området.

Nyckelord: CSR, SRI, shareholder value och Etiska placeringar Problemformulering: Hur ser förvaltarna och investerarna på framtiden för CSR/SRI och kommer deras jobb som förvaltare och investerare att förändras efter kriserna som varit? Syfte: Syftet med studien är att undersöka hur CSR och SRI har och kommer att utvecklas på den svenska investeringsmarknaden.Metod: För att besvara studiens syfte och frågeställning valdes en kvalitativ ansats. I uppsatsen intervjuas investerare som arbetar dagligen med CSR/SRI investeringar. I uppsatsen används artiklar inom området för socialt hållbara investeringar. De svar som erhålls av respondenterna i intervjuerna granskas, reflekteras samt jämförs med tillgänglig forskning på området.

Problems: How is the purpose of the swedish limited liability company to increase the wealth of its shareholders given in swedish corporate law? Based on which legal and economical grounds has this regulation been made? Which problems may occur when the purpose of the company is to maximize the wealth of its shareholders? Which strategies can be used to prevent the problems that may occur? Should the purpose of the company be to maximize the wealth of its shareholders? Purpose: The purpose of this thesis is to evaluate whether a limited liability company primarily shall aim at maximizing the wealth of its shareholders or not. Delimitations: This thesis only attend swedish limited liability companies. It also only treat swedish corporate law de lege lata. The thesis focus on larger commercial companies which shares are widely spread.

In this master thesis we are trying to investigate whether the heads of the four major Swedish banks are receiving compensation because of their own performance. We have investigated a number of parameters in the reporting and compensation description of Handelsbanken, Nordea, SEB and Swedbank and compared it to macro data.We have used publicly available information from the banks as well as macro data from 1998 to 2009.We have come to the conclusion that the revenue and profits of the banks are heavily influenced by external factors and that there does not appear to be a clear link between a CEOs actions, the reported results for the bank, the shareholder gains and the compensation for the CEO. It appears as if the bonus payments to a CEO may depend more on parameters beyond the CEOs own control than the performance of the CEO..