Institutionella ägares inverkan på redovisningskonservatism - En empirisk studie av företag noterade på Stockholmsbörsen
The increasing holdings by institutional investors have raised concerns about the institutions passive investment strategies and the implications for corporate governance. A way for investors to address moral hazard and opportunistic behaviour of management is to demand conservatism in accounting practices. This paper analyses the relation between institutional ownership and accounting conservatism in the Swedish market by studying firms on the Nasdaq OMX Stockholm over a three-year period. Furthermore, the study investigates whether ownership by institutions with high probability of monitoring managers leads to higher conservatism in financial reporting. To measure accounting conservatism this study uses the asymmetric timeliness measure developed by Basu (1997). The results from the empirical analysis find a positive association between institutional ownership and accounting conservatism. However, the results do not show any significant difference between monitor-ing institutions and other institutions. The study provides a deeper understanding of how institu¬tional investors influence accounting practices in Swedish publicly traded companies.