Agentkostnader, ägande och utdelningar
en studie om sambandet mellan ägandet och utdelningar i Sverige
Agency theoryDividendOwnership structureOwner typesAgency costsOwnership concentrationAgentteoriAgentkostnaderUtdelningägarstrukturägartypägarkoncentration
Background: Theoretical, it?s been questioned why dividends exists in companies based upon the fact that there is a separation between ownership and control. According to the agency theoretical perception, dividends is used as a manner to unify the interest of this separation, which in turn lower the agency cost, and increase the efficiency of companies.Purpose: The aim of this master thesis is to scrutinize and analyse the association between Swedish firms? owner structure and owner types and their inclination to dividend.Method: We attack the problem with a hypothetical-deductive research method by using the existence of a universal theory, the agency theory. From our theoretical framework we propose a set of hypotheses. Through these hypotheses we intend to empirical investigate the agency theoretical explanations regarding ownership and dividend policy in Swedish public firms. The empirical material has been gathered from annual reports, Börsguide and Ägarna och Makten. The data has then been statistical processed and analyzed which consecutively resulted in our conclusions.Conclusions: The findings from our study indicate that ownership affects companies dividend policy. The most striking findings in our study show that there is a significant positive relationship with owner concentration and dividends. Comparing to other studies inthe field this is a rather controversy conclusion. According to Schooley and Barney (1994) and Farinha (2003) our results confirm the proposal that there is a U-shaped relationship between internal ownership and dividends.Suggestions for further research: Our suggestion for further research is to expand our study by investigate a time-serie of data and compare Swedish listed firms with firms in other European countries. Further suggestion is to proceed the identification of ownership as amechanism for corporate governance. Based on the fact that the market context in Sweden has developed, it would be of great interest to investigate ownership affection on the procurement of raising capital.