http://hdl.handle.net/10398/82 2013-05-18T06:53:04Z 2013-05-18T06:53:04Z Strand, Therese http://hdl.handle.net/10398/8460 2012-06-25T08:20:40Z 2012-06-25T00:00:00Z

The Owners and the Power Strand, Therese This thesis consists of five empirical studies, all relating to shareholder activism at annual general meetings. The first study concerns the structure and content of general meetings in Denmark and Sweden comparatively. The paper reveals significant differences in the level of activism, with Swedish investors being the most active in terms of proposals, proxy voting, and ‘voice’. The paper takes a legal approach, and discusses divergence in activism levels from the perspective of shareholder prerequisites to engage in monitoring efforts. Further, the paper investigating the topics addressed through questions and opinions. The results show that matters which can be categorized as irrelevant are reasonably rare. This is an important finding, as suggestions to abolish general meetings have often been based on the assumption that general meetings facilitate nothing but irrelevant, time consuming, and costly discussions that serves no monitoring function. The second study analyses the impact of voting power on shareholder activism. We hypothesize that there is a positive relationship between shareholder activism and a measure of the largest shareholder’s sensitivity to increased participation by small shareholders and find that firms’ amenability to small shareholder influence leads to more proposals by the nomination committee, but fewer proposals by other shareholders. We interpret this as evidence that the shareholder elected nomination committees effectively channel shareholder concerns and preempt other kinds of activism. Politicians and companies that desire active shareholders could improve the amenability of firms to shareholder influence by ownership transparency, shareholder committees, and contacts with shareholder associations and other vehicles for collective action...

2012-06-25T00:00:00Z Li, Xin http://hdl.handle.net/10398/8357 2011-10-31T11:41:04Z 2011-10-31T00:00:00Z

Toward an Integrative Framework of National Competitiveness Li, Xin The starting point of this PhD research is two observations. The first is that people often tend to discuss a country’s national competitiveness in a general tone, i.e., judging a country to be either competitive or uncompetitive, rather than making more balanced assessment, and therefore their opinions often contradict each other. The second observation is that there are many competing international reports that rank a large number of countries in terms of their national competitiveness. These reports often provide different rankings for a given country (e.g., China), and therefore the readers of these reports are often left with a confusing picture. The first observation reflects the reality that there has been a lack of commonly accepted definition of national competitiveness. The second reflects the methodological problems of the indexing-and-ranking methods commonly used by international competitiveness reports...

2011-10-31T00:00:00Z Sigurjonsson, Throstur Olaf http://hdl.handle.net/10398/8336 2011-09-09T12:42:48Z 2011-09-09T00:00:00Z

Governance Failure and Iceland’s Financial Collapse Sigurjonsson, Throstur Olaf Currently, the corporate governance has the agenda of categorizing reality and thereby determining which systems are more effective and efficient in a given context. A question is posed; how has the internationalization of markets, liberalization, deregulation, and privatization adapted to rapid changes in traditionally based models of corporate governance? When corporate governance practices are exported from one country to another, they tend to be translated and customized to local practices before being adopted. The objective of this thesis is to examine this type of adaptation and explain the circumstances that led to a collapse of governance mechanisms, using Iceland as an example.

2011-09-09T00:00:00Z Ohnemus, Lars http://hdl.handle.net/10398/8022 2010-03-10T14:07:27Z 2010-03-10T00:00:00Z

Brand Thrust: Strategic Branding and Shareholder Value Ohnemus, Lars

2010-03-10T00:00:00Z