Abstract  Background:                     In an equity crowdfunding campaign, the investor receives shares in the company in return for the investment, which makes equity crowdfunding similar to traditional sources of equity funding. Nevertheless, skeptics have referred to equity crowdfunding as “dumb money”, since it might not provide similar non-financial value added as realized from professional investors. The main literature used for the frame of reference were Boué (2007), Macht and Robinson (2008) and Macht and Weatherston (2014). The literature worked as a basis for deriving a table, outlining the non-financial value added received by venture capitalists and business angels, as well as showing where literature is lacking regarding non-financial value added by equity crowdfunding investors. Purpose: The purpose of this thesis was to explore the non-financial value added by equity crowdfunding investors to the entrepreneur. This purpose was answered by two research questions: (1) Do equity crowdfunding investors provide similar non-financial value added to the entrepreneur as traditional equity funding investors do? (2) Are there any additional non-financial value added realized from equity crowdfunding? Method: This thesis follows the interpretivist research paradigm and undertakes an abductive research approach in order to explore the purpose. Primary data was collected through semi-structured interviews with seven entrepreneurs who had successfully conducted an equity crowdfunding campaign in Sweden. Secondary data was collected from peer-reviewed articles containing relevant theories and models. Conclusion: This research suggests that there are similarities between professional investors and equity crowdfunding investors in terms of non-financial value added. The contribution from equity crowdfunding investors seems to be dependent on the effort that the entrepreneur puts into the relationship with the investors. Furthermore, equity crowdfunding also allows the entrepreneur to maintain ownership and control over the company. However, each equity crowdfunding case is different and there are no guarantees of receiving certain types of investors.

During the last decade, there has been severe critique directed at the auditing profession regarding its necessity and accuracy. Auditors have been accused of neglecting their duty to the public interest, which is overshadowed by their financial dependence on the audited companies. In light on several large audit failures, the users of the audit report have demanded more information be released regarding the company and the audit process. In response to this, several standard setting bodies have released new regulatory suggestions regarding the audit report. Among the revised regulations that are relevant to Sweden are the ISA 700 (revised) and the newly created ISA 701, both of which become effective starting December 2016. FAR, the Swedish Professional Institution for Authorized Accountants and Auditors, have expressed concerns regarding the effect of the implementation of the Key Audit Matters in combination with the Swedish confidentiality clause, by which auditors must abide. These revisions are meant to increase the informative value of the audit report for the users, where the main users of the audit report are non-professional investors. Due to this, along with lacking research on the topic of Swedish non-professional investors in this context, we have chosen to focus our thesis on the effects of the changes to the audit report in relation to the investment behavior of this specific group. Research Question: How is the Swedish adaptation of ISA 700 (revised) and ISA 701 likely to impact the perceived value of the new audit report to young Swedish nonprofessional investors? We have conducted an online questionnaire with an attached case, derived from a listed British company that has already made similar changes to their audit report format. Based on the responses of 100 young Swedish non-professional investors, we found that the new changes to the audit report, as we presented them, had positive effect on the young non-professional investors perception on the audit report. Of the respondents, 64% viewed the new audit report as significantly more informative than the current Swedish audit report. Both new information, in the form of the audit resolution paragraph, and useful information, in the form of the Key Audit Matters paragraph, statement of the audit firm, and movement of the audit opinion, was perceive by the respondents. In addition to this, we found that 63% of our sample would read the audit report in the future, as compared to 49% today. However, we are unsure of whether these positive effects will be observe following the Swedish implementation of the changes, due to FAR and Swedish auditors hesitation toward the Key Audit Matters.

本論文分為兩部分，第一部份為以台灣之封閉型基金探討訊息事件下之投資者敏感性與市場效率性。第二部份為以東南亞六家國家基金探討投資者過渡反應之現象同時研究訊息分類後之訊息效果。 / This dissertation studies investors’ sentiment to dramatic public information events and the news effect on the valuation of closed-end funds. There are two main issues included in this dissertation. For the issue of investors’ sentiment, we employ domestic closed-end funds from Taiwan to test how political information events affect fund share price and net asset value. The political information events employed are the 1996 and 2000 presidential elections in Taiwan, including prominent political events ahead of the elections. For the other issue of news effect on the valuation of closed-end country funds, the six Asian country funds listed on the New York Stock Exchange are employed and the country-specific news are culled from the headlines shown on the front page of The New York Times. For investors’ sentiment, we examine how dramatic political news and events affect closed-end fund data, fund price, and net asset value, using a sample of Taiwan data. We use data from Taiwan, because its stock market has been repeatedly affected by political events. We develop a theoretical model to show how information shocks would affect the discounts on closed-end funds. In designing the model, which is tested below, we start by assuming that the information shock is consistent with market efficiency. Our empirical results show that, even though this assumption is corroborated by three out of four events, the remaining one event in four induces changes which are inconsistent with market efficiency. This provides support for the theory of the preponderance of investors’ sentiment. The results also show that the return on fund share prices and the return of net asset value (NAV) move in the same direction and the impact of information shocks to the return of fund share price and return of NAV have mostly the same sign. Although the results from domestic funds, with fund share prices and NAV that are valued in the identical market, tell us that there exists investors’ sentiment, we intend to resolve what the information effects are on the valuation of closed-end country funds that have fund share prices and NAV valued in two different entities/markets. We use a sample of six Asian country funds, listed on the New York Stock Exchange, to test whether salient country-specific news affects investors’ reaction around the Asian financial crisis period. Our results show that in regular weeks, fund share prices react less to changes in fundamentals. In weeks with salient news appearing on the front page of The New York Times, fund share prices react much more than those in regular weeks. We also find that economic news affects the adjustment process of fund share prices more significantly before and during the Asian financial crisis periods. These results are consistent with the hypothesis that news events play a role in the magnitude of investors’ reaction to changes in the fundamental values of closed-end country funds. As to the reaction of volume to news, the results show that news effect is significant in full sample period. For the reaction of volume to categorized news, economic news is significant in full sample period. In sum, the results from either domestic funds or country funds all show that news events/information do play a role in individual investors’ sentiment. The phenomenon is more conspicuous during a financial crisis period.

<p>Many people have not even heard about Eritrea and even less about the free zones that is establishing there. The purpose of this thesis is to increase the understanding about the free zones that exits in Eritrea today. The port of Massawa is the one that the focus is upon in our thesis. The reason for the implementation of the free zones is the re-<em>construction</em> of the economy. The country is restoring the economy due to the fact that they had been in war with Ethiopia. Free zones are an established concept that already exists in other country’s for example Djibouti, Dubai, Sudan and so on. The free zones in Eritrea will have to show its forefeet to be competitive.</p><p>We want to increase the understanding of the free zones in Eritrea and even increase the understanding for how the strategy and the project are being handled. We will use models and theories to explain how the implementation is being done in the Eritrean free zones. The models that we are going to use, will illustrate how the management can be done. The methodological chapter will describe the approached used during the entire thesis. By collecting various kinds of data, the understanding has increased. We have analyzed all data, concluded the report and offered further recommendations.</p>

This paper looks at the difference in disclosure requirements between the foreign earnings that companies plan to repatriate back to the United States and those that companies plan to permanently reinvest abroad. The concepts of transparency and compliance are addressed as issues related to the current disclosure requirements surrounding permanently reinvested earnings and the associated unrecognized deferred tax liability. The resulting implications on investors as well as the effects of tax holidays will also be discussed. Overall, this paper aims to prove the need for modification of the current disclosure requirements regarding foreign earnings labeled as permanently reinvested earnings as well as stricter regulation of these requirements in order to increase company compliance.

The new accounting standard IFRS 13 had its mandatory implementation January 1 st 2013. The main reason for the implementation was to eliminate inconsistencies and reduce complexities in fair value measurements. The new disclosure would therefore enable public real estate companies to be more transparent towards investors, who base their financial decision on the information that is presented in the financial report. Since the market value of investment properties is important for investors when making their financial decisions, this study focuses on the disclosure requirements of IFRS 13 in Sweden. The aim of this research was to study how well Swedish real estate companies follow the new disclosure requirements and how this may affect the investors’ financial decisions. In order to conduct the study a mixed method approach was undertaken. The study consisted of a sampled of 90 financial reports from 15 public real estate companies in Sweden before and after IFRS 13. The disclosure requirements were later calculated in accordance to an unweighted disclosure index and then tested against a hypothesis with the help of the Wilcoxon matched pair test. The comparison of the financial reports during the period 2010- 2015, that is before and after IFRS 13, enabled us to see how well the new requirements were followed. If a certain disclosure requirement was not followed an analysis of the audit reports was made in order to conclude if a modified opinion had been left by the auditor or not. In order to strengthen this specific part of the study a qualitative method was undertaken to get an expert’s point of view regarding the new requirement as well how the investors may be affected. Four auditors were interviewed in order to acquire this information but also to get a better insight regarding the investors’ point of view. After the data collection and analysis, our findings reveal that the overall compliance of public real estate companies in Sweden was high and that the disclosure quality had increased after the implementation of IFRS 13. However, not all disclosure requirements were fulfilled and none of the company’s auditors chose to give a modified statement. The results from the qualitative part of the study showed that all participants consider auditors to have sufficient knowledge of IFRS 13. Furthermore, the participants’ also claimed that the change of disclosure requirements has little impact on investors’ financial decisions.

The objectives of this thesis are: first, to investigate the impact of investor sentiment in UK financial markets in different investment intervals through the construction of separate sentiment measures for UK investors and UK institutional investors; second, to examine institutional herding behaviour by studying UK mutual fund data; third, to explore the causal relation between institutional herding and investor sentiment. The study uses US, German and UK financial market data and investor sentiment survey data from 1st January 1996 to 30th June 2011. The impact of investor sentiment on UK equity returns is studied both in general, and more specifically by distinguishing between tranquil and financial crisis periods. It is found that UK equity returns are significantly influenced by US individual and institutional sentiment and hardly at all by local UK investor sentiment. The sentiment contagion across borders is more pronounced in the shorter investment interval. The investigation of institutional herding behaviour is conducted by examining return dispersions and the Beta dispersions of UK mutual funds. Little evidence of herding in return is found, however strong evidence of Beta herding is presented. The study also suggests that beta herding is not caused by market fundamental and macroeconomic factors, instead, it perhaps arises from investor sentiment. This is consistent between closed-end and open-ended funds. The relation between institutional herding and investor sentiment is investigated by examining the measures of herding against the measures of investor sentiment in the UK and US. It suggests that UK institutional herding is influenced by investor sentiment, and UK institutional sentiment has a greater impact as compared to UK market sentiment. Open-end fund managers are more likely to be affected by individual investor sentiment, whereas closed-end fund managers herd on institutional sentiment.

Funds of qualified investors Recent events in the financial world emphasize the need to understand institutions and instruments of capital market. From that reason I have chosen the area of funds of qualified investors. The aim of my thesis is to examine the treatment of funds of qualified investors, to characterize the main changes the funds have come through and to carry out a comparative analysis of similar funds which are intended for professional investors abroad and to focus on strict European legislation in this area which has an effect on the Czech funds of qualified investors and assess influence of the legislation on them. The thesis is structured into six chapters, each of them dealing with different aspects of the funds of qualified investors. The first chapter is introductory and introduces basic terminology of the subjects of collective investment; the chapter is divided into three subchapters. Subchapter one describes collective investment in the context of financial market, the second subchapter concerns the main principles of collective investment and in the third subchapter there are explained advantages and disadvantages of collective investment. The second chapter introduces the legislation of collective investment in the Czech Republic; it is also divided into three...

In the first chapter, we analyze the role of market development, risk premium, and transparency as factors influencing the value of cash in firms listed as American Depository Receipts. Based on the method by Pinkowitz and Williamson (2002), our primary results are as follows. The market value of cash is greater on average for ADR firms than for U.S. firms, and within the ADR sample the value of cash is greater for firms based in less developed countries after 2007 financial crisis but not before. Together, the results suggest that the market development is especially important during more volatile periods. Further, the value of cash is negatively associated with the market risk premium. In addition, the relation between insider trading law execution and the value of cash is statistically insignificant for all periods, but corporate-level transparency as measured by the number of analysts is weakly negatively related to ADR firms’ cash value before 2007 after controlling for the fixed effects. The second chapter attempts to assess the relative importance of superior information and hedging in institutional trading in equity index futures in the Taiwan Futures market for the sample period of January to June 2012. Based on the methodology by Llorente, Michaely, Saar, and Wang (2002), we find that, for the market as a whole, significant informed trading or hedging frequently occur, and the opening minutes tend to be associated with a greater portion of trading motivated by hedging. More important to our purpose, for foreign institutions the absolute value of institutional order imbalance tends to be greater on days when the overall market’s informed trading is greater in the cases of regular contract on Taiwan composite index futures and electronic index futures, but for the dealer and domestic fund groups trading is not correlated with the overall market’s informed trading or hedging. An additional analysis of the relation between past institution trades and current returns provides some evidence implying institutions are informed, but the evidence can also be interpreted as their trades, which account for more than half of the overall trading, having an impact on subsequent trades.

This dissertation consists of 2 essays in the area of corporate finance. The title of my first essay is “Impact of Institutional Investors on Firms’ Financial Constraint and Liquidity”. We can find ample evidences in existing literature which show that institutional investors play a vital role in the corporate world. Many researchers have linked institutional investors to activism, monitoring benefits, mitigating the cost of debt using government bond, spin off activities and improving information asymmetry problem. In the first essay, I would like to add another dimension to institutional investors’ literature by examining institutional investors’ role in mitigating financial constraint problem in the firm. Institutional investors have large financial networks and make large financial investment in firms. Their presence might help firms attract external capital. I am using 2 financial constraint measurements; KZ index (Lamont, Polk, Saa-Requejo, 2001) and bank line of credit (Sufi, 2009). I am also adding additional measurement for financial constraint using notes payable. I find evidences to support the hypotheses that institutional investors’ presence and ownership mitigate financial constraints. The title of my second essay is “Long- and Short-Term Institutional Investors and Payout Policy”. In the second essay, I examine the relationship between the firms’ payout policy and the presence/ownership of certain type of institutional investors. I classify the types of institutional investors using Bushee’s (1998, 2001) classification of institutional investors. I find that the presence and the magnitude of long term institutional investors positively affect the likelihood and the magnitude of dividend. I also find that the presence and the magnitude of short term institutional investors positively affect the likelihood and the magnitude of share repurchases. This study suggests that the presence of different types of institutional investors can affect certain type of payout policy. Keywords: Transient; dedicated; monitoring; trading