The anonymity of shareholders and non-transparent ownership structures of joint stock companies belongs to the most discussed issues of these days in terms of corporate law. The significant changes in relevant legislation and unresolved questions of the anonymity of shareholders are the reason I decided to focus on this topic. The main purpose of my thesis is to analyze the anonymity of shareholders and conditions of their identification, primarily regarding the recent recodification of the Czech civil law and the legislation being prepared not only in the Czech Republic but also at EU-level. The thesis is composed of six chapters. Chapter One is introductory and deals with the history of the anonymity of shareholders and their identification within the Czech territory. Chapter two is concerned with the problems that resulted from enacting the Bearer Share Abolition Act. Next two Chapters concentrate on current Czech legislation regulating the anonymity of shareholders and conditions of their identification, represented in particular by the Business Corporation Act and other relevant statues. These chapters are subdivided into several parts which thematically deal with the anonymity based on the form of shares, information publicized in the Commercial Register or the conception of a trust; it also...

This thesis deals with degree of effective anonymity of shareholders in a public limited company and with possible ways of its limiting. It is also concerned with manners of identification of shareholders for purpose of exercise of their shareholder rights, as well as for uncovering shareholder structure of a public limited company is specific cases, provided by law. The aim of the thesis is to explain and analyze the legislation de lege lata, particularly with regards to recodification of private law and to other upcoming enactments of both private and public law. The topic was chosen by the author also with intent to professionally explain this issue which has not been dealt with comprehensively in academic papers. The topic has been elaborated particularly by analyzing individual legal concepts relating to anonymity and identification of shareholders; a historical method is used in the introduction dedicated to historical roots of anonymity of shareholders, too. The introduction contains characteristics of public limited company, including definition of shares, and sets the traditional concept of shareholder's anonymity in the historical context. The main part of the thesis is focused on analysis of individual provisions of the Commercial Code from the perspective of degree of shareholder's...

Thesis (M.Com. (Taxation))--University of the Witwatersrand, Faculty of Commerce, Law and Management, School of Accountancy, 2014. / It is commonly understood that it is the people within the organisation that hugely affect the efficiency and work environment, which ultimately brings about greater profitability and value. With this in mind, corporate entities continue to ensure that they are attracting and retaining high performing individuals to their organisations with the view of generating greater value for shareholders. The question then arises as to how to attract key individuals to an organisation and keep those individuals. The use of share incentive plans is an established tool implemented by corporates which incentivises employees to remain at an organisation for an extended term while at the same time, attempts to align the interest of the employee with that of the shareholders. Share incentive plans provide one such solution of achieving both these objectives, but how practical is it to implement such an incentive plan in light of the constantly changing tax landscape. Against this commercial driver to attract and retain employees is the apparent mistrust by Treasury and SARS of the use of share plans to incentive employees which is considered by Treasury and SARS as a salary conversion plan with the objective of obtaining a tax advantage. This paper will consider the practical issues faced by corporates trying to implement share incentive schemes to secure the employee’s income earning structure for a prolonged period and aligning the interests of the employee with the shareholders, by considering the tax influencers behind share incentive plans which are being indirectly moulded by the tax legislation, drafted by National Treasury and implemented by SARS. This report will consider the taxation of income earned qua employee versus the income qua shareholder. In order to consider this the paper will attempt to determine where the line currently rests between employee and shareholder, by providing an outline of the current legislation around share plans and some of the commonly seen share schemes implemented in practice. This paper will then consider the direction that this line is moving, if at all, by considering the proposed changes to the legislation as drafted by Treasury and lastly consider how these proposed legislative changes impacts corporates who are trying to implement a long term share incentive plan.

Pour un investisseur, les choix sont multiples. Il convient tout d'abord d'élaborer à partir de critères qui sont propres à chacun (période d'investissement, performance, risque, liquidité…), une allocation entre les différents actifs possibles. Lorsque cette allocation est réalisée, le problème est ensuite de sélectionner les meilleurs vecteurs de chaque classe d'actifs, sous les contraintes qui ont été celles de l'élaboration de l'allocation. Notre travail s'est limité à la seule classe d'actif actions. 1. LA SELECTION D’OPCVM ACTIONS. Comment l'investisseur peut-il gérer ses actions ? Différents choix sont possibles : - gérer son portefeuille d'actions en direct ; - gérer un portefeuille d’OPCVM actions (ou déléguer par mandat la gestion à des professionnels) ; - gérer son investissement actions par le biais d'indices ; - utiliser un mélange des différentes méthodes précédentes. Notre étude portera sur le cas où l'investisseur a choisi la délégation totale ou partielle de son portefeuille d’actions à un professionnel, que ce soit l'allocation à l'intérieur de la classe d'actifs actions (allocation géographique, sectorielle, style de gestion, etc.) ou la sélection (choix des titres), ou les deux. Cette décision suppose qu’il considère que certains professionnels feront mieux que lui, et mieux que le marché, car dans le cas contraire il préférera soit gérer lui-même, soit s'en remettre aux produits indiciels. Il reste toutefois un cas particulier que nous pourrions appeler « le pari de Pascal de la gestion ». L'investisseur n'est pas persuadé qu'un gérant professionnel peut faire mieux que le marché, mais il a quand même un doute. S’il y en avait un ou quelques-uns ? [...] / No English summary available.

As the economy has been growing fast in China, Chinese people have more incomes and then higher standard of living. In the case of household water treatment, more and more urban residents in China use bottled water or water filtration system instead of tap water because people start to worry about polluted tap water. According to a survey from China Water Supply Services Promotion Alliance in 2014, 59% of urban residents drinking water is from tap water (after being boiled), 41% from bottled water and water filtration system. The 41% participants prefer bottled water as the first choice over a water filtration system. The comparative advantages and disadvantages of home water filtration system and bottled water are analyzed using comparative analysis. The reasons why home water filtration industry has grown slowly in urban China even though it is less expensive and has environmental benefits are analyzed using a system dynamics model. The model focuses on the physical system of home water filtration industry. The study shows that order delivery delay and service time are key factors to the adoption rate of home water filtration system. However, initial cost becomes a limiting factor to the growth of the market of home water filtration system. The study proposes the according market policy, demand policy, and supply policy to improve the current scenario.

Since the dividend irrelevance theory of Miller and Modigliani (1961), academics and practitioners still have little understanding of the managerial incentives underpinning dividend policy. Black (1976) observed, “The harder we look at the dividend picture, the more it seems like a puzzle, with pieces that just don’t fit together.” <br /> <br /> This thesis aims to shed additional light on the dividend puzzle. Accordingly, two theoretical models have been developed to help explain why firms pay dividends or repurchase their own shares. The models consider the case in which the managers of a high-quality firm (firm H) and a low-quality firm (firm L) choose to use corporate cash flows to pay dividends, repurchase shares, or invest in a real project from which they can earn private benefits. I focus on the case in which firm H has a positive NPV project whereas firm L has a negative NPV project. <br /> <br /> In the first model, developed in spirit of Isagawa (2000), I show that paying dividends is a dominated strategy for firm H, regardless of the managerial weight parameter. If the manager is myopic, firm L will choose to repurchase shares at the detriment of existing shareholders. If the manager is farsighted, on the other hand, firm L will choose to pay dividends. I also consider the case in which investors are irrational in that they do not update their beliefs upon observing one firm repurchasing shares while the other firm paying dividends. The model shows that, in inefficient market, firm L will not mimic given that firm H repurchases shares since it cannot obtain any benefit from doing so. <br /> <br /> In the second model, built on Fairchild and Zhang’s (2005) work, in which the managerial payout decisions depend on the relative magnitudes of dividend and repurchase catering premia, I demonstrate that a myopic manager of firm H may pass up a positive NPV project in order to cater to investor demand for dividends or share repurchases (an adverse selection problem). In addition, I show that the agency cost of free cash flow can be mitigated if the dividend-catering premium is sufficiently high. That is, firm L’s manager will have a strong incentive to return excess cash to shareholders rather than invest it in a negative NPV project. <br /> <br /> Then, I investigate dividend changes in Thailand over the period 2002-2005. To test the signalling and free cash flow hypotheses, I first analyse profitability changes around dividend changes and benchmark them with control firms, and examine the relation between dividend changes and the past and future profitability. Consistent with Benartzi et al.’s (1997) evidence in the U.S., dividend changes in Thailand do not signal future profitability but rather the past performance. Then, I examine the determinants of dividend changes and firm’s decision to change dividends. I also investigate the short-run and long-run stock price performance of dividend-changing firms, and the relation between announcement returns and hypothesised independent variables. Finally, I examine firms’ investment behaviour following dividend changes. The results do not support the view that dividend changes signal future profitability. Overall, the findings are broadly consistent with the free cash flow hypothesis rather than the signalling hypothesis. <br /> <br /> Additionally, I provide preliminary evidence on open-market share repurchases (OMRs) in Thailand over the period December 2001 to January 2007. I find that stock prices react positively to OMR announcements and continue to increase in the longer term, suggesting that stock market underreacts to the signal conveyed by the managers of repurchasing firms. Comparing the actual repurchase cost with the costs of benchmark portfolios, I find that the actual repurchase cost is the lowest. This finding suggests that the managers of repurchasing firms have substantial ability to time the market.

Share price returns on different time scales can be well modeled by a superstatistical dynamics. We provide an investigation which type of superstatistics is most suitable to properly describe share price dynamics on various time scales. It is shown that while chi-square-superstatistics works well on a time scale of days, on a much smaller time scale of minutes the price changes are better described by lognormal superstatistics. The system dynamics thus exhibits a transition from lognormal to chi-square-superstatistics as a function of time scale. We discuss a more general model interpolating between both statistics which fits the observed data very well. We also present results on correlation functions of the extracted superstatistical volatility parameter, which exhibits exponential decay for returns on large time scales, whereas for returns on small time scales there are long-range correlations and power-law decays. We also apply the symbolic dynamics technique from dynamical system theory to analyse the coarse-grained evolution of share price returns. A nontrivial spectrum of Renyi entropies is found. We study how the spectrum depends on the time scale of returns, the sector of stocks considered, as well as the number of symbols used for the symbolic description. Overall our analysis confirms that in the symbol space transition probabilities of observed share price returns depend on the entire history of previous symbols, thus emphasizing the need for a model of share price evolution based on non-Markovian stochastic processes. Our method allows for quantitative comparisons of entirely different complex systems, for example the statistics of coarse-grained share price returns using 4 symbols can be compared with that of other complex systems.

(Non-)transferability of shares in business corporations Abstract This diploma thesis deals with (non-)transferability of shares in unlimited partnership, limited partnership, limited-liability company and joint-stock company. A share represents participation of a shareholder in business corporation. Each form of business corporation has a different modification of share transferability in the Business Corporation Act. Transfer of share is either prohibited, limited or allowed without any limitation. The rules on transferability also differ as to whether shareholders may deviate from them or not. The differences are mainly due to the personal or capital nature of the business corporation. The aim of this work is to determine the reasons which led the legislature to current transferability of shares in business corporations and to assess whether this legislation an appropriate solution is. The diploma thesis is structured into five parts. The first part deals with the theoretical introduction and defines a share and business corporations. The second and third part of the diploma thesis provides a detailed analysis of the transferability of the share in business companies, including the explanatory uncertainties and discussions that the current legislation raises. Part of the second part is also the...

This thesis develops an analytical model of a small-scale solar central receiver power plant located at the California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo, California at 35.28° N, 120.66° W. The model is used to analyze typical energy output at any time during the year. The power plant is designed to produce an output of 100 kW electrical power, and is supplemented by the combustion of natural gas. Methodologies for determining the proper size and layout of heliostats, optimal tower height, receiver size, and turbine engine selection are developed. In this specific design, solar shares of up to 73.2% and an annual average of 44% are possible through the use of a gas-solar hybrid microturbine engine. Larger solar shares are not possible due to the limited size of land (about 0.5 acres used for this project) which limits the number of possible heliostat installations.

Banking leaders who fail to implement social media data-driven marketing strategies lose opportunities to increase customer market share through customer acquisition and retention, improved customer service, heightened brand awareness, customer cocreation, and relationship management. The purpose of this multiple case study was to explore strategies banking leaders used to integrate social media analytics into marketing strategies to increase customer market share. The target population was 6 senior bankers from 2 banks in the mid-Atlantic region of the United States, with a significant social media presence, including 25,000 or more followers across 2 social media platforms. The disruptive innovation theory served as the conceptual framework for the study. Data were collected from semistructured interviews and a review of the organizations' public business documents, websites, and social media websites. Data were analyzed using coding to determine themes. By analyzing these sources and performing methodological triangulation, 8 key themes emerged that were categorized into 4 groupings: (a) social media knowledge management, (b) social media marketing strategy implementation, (c) social media data challenges and communication, and (d) social media competitive gain and future enhancements. The implications of this study for positive social change include social and environmental benefits such as creating jobs and economic growth through a corporate social responsibility initiative. Current and prospect customer bases, local communities, bankers, and stakeholders might benefit from the findings of this study.