<p>Introduction: Increased savings in funds has enforced the importance of the institutions. During the last 25 years they have augmented their ownership from 20 to 85 % of the Swedish stock exchange. Thereby the ownership becomes more and more financial, meaning that the return is the most crucial. In an article in Dagens Nyheter the president of the Swedish Shareholders Association and the president of Metall object to the institutional passivity which they consider being an important problem. </p><p>Purpose: The purpose of this essay is to put the institutional passivity in perspective. Method: The study was made in three parts. First we studied four companies, two with passive ownership and two with active, in two different lines of business. Then we studied the ownership structure in companies with a negative profittrend. Finally we contacted different trust funds to get their opinion on owner passivity. </p><p>Result: The first study showed no difference between the passively and the actively owned companies. Neither did our second study prove any link between performance and owner passivity. Concerning the trust funds they all said to be active why passivity was no problem since it did not exist. </p><p>Conclusion: We think that all trust funds say they are active because they have to say so and that they in practice are more or less passive. From the result of our studies we conclude that institutional passivity seems to be no problem. We think the conflict causing this discussion could be between different ownergroups rather than between management and owner</p>

Introduction: Increased savings in funds has enforced the importance of the institutions. During the last 25 years they have augmented their ownership from 20 to 85 % of the Swedish stock exchange. Thereby the ownership becomes more and more financial, meaning that the return is the most crucial. In an article in Dagens Nyheter the president of the Swedish Shareholders Association and the president of Metall object to the institutional passivity which they consider being an important problem. Purpose: The purpose of this essay is to put the institutional passivity in perspective. Method: The study was made in three parts. First we studied four companies, two with passive ownership and two with active, in two different lines of business. Then we studied the ownership structure in companies with a negative profittrend. Finally we contacted different trust funds to get their opinion on owner passivity. Result: The first study showed no difference between the passively and the actively owned companies. Neither did our second study prove any link between performance and owner passivity. Concerning the trust funds they all said to be active why passivity was no problem since it did not exist. Conclusion: We think that all trust funds say they are active because they have to say so and that they in practice are more or less passive. From the result of our studies we conclude that institutional passivity seems to be no problem. We think the conflict causing this discussion could be between different ownergroups rather than between management and owner

The purpose of the study is to investigate the governance by the Swedish government of the state-owned enterprises in relation to UN Guiding Principles for Business and Human Rights. In the study the Swedish state’s ownership policy is analyzed together with the Swedish national action plan for business and human rights in relation to article 4 in the UN Guiding Principles.The method used in the study is a critical legal reasoning around the text combined with other external perspectives such as the underpinning values and the context. The conclusion of the study is that the Swedish state’s ownership policy should be interpreted in the light of international law, since there are compelling reasons grounded in previous research that article 4 in the UN Guiding Principles is related to the state’s duty to protect and the requirement of due diligence. The study demonstrates that the Swedish government has taken several steps in relation to the state-owned companies, although it is hard to conclude that these are additional in the meaning of article 4. The requirement in the UN Guiding Principles on state-owned enterprises to perform human rights due diligence and supported by international law is not expressed in the State’s ownership policy. Another conclusion is that the requirements and expectations on state-owned enterprises with regard to human rights are integrated with firm expectations on business opportunities. These requirements and expectations could be characterized as instrumental for the overriding objective of the state-owned enterprises: long-term value generation.