This thesis provides empirical evidence on the relation between concentrated ownership and the long term operating performance of acquiring firms. Large shareholders are generally viewed as beneficial monitors of corporate performance but high levels of concentration can lead to potential expropriation from minority shareholders via managerial entrenchment, tunneling, or sub-optimal investment decisions. This problem is potentially greater in firms with separation of voting and ownership rights. This thesis investigates the performance around takeovers in English origin countries other than the US by following the classification of La Porta, Lopez-de-Silanes, Shleifer and Vishny (1998). While generally considered similar to the US, these countries vary with respect to ownership concentration and investor protection. This thesis controls a broad set of corporate governance mechanisms including first generation governance measures like CEO positions, board characteristics, and other blockholders. Furthermore, this thesis also examines whether different degrees of second generation governance mechanisms such as anti-director rights, accounting standards, legal enforcement, and extra-legal institutions lead to different levels of M&A performance. In addition, this thesis includes the new legal indexes recently developed by Djankov, La Porta, Lopez-de-Silanes and Shleifer (2006); these measures have yet to be examined through empirical research. By using an accounting based methodology, this thesis presents Healy, Palepu and Ruback (1992) abnormal post cash flow return regression-based results and results of a change model (Ghosh 2001). Moreover, this thesis refers to the sample matching techniques in Barber and Lyon (1996) and develops the industry, size, and pre performance benchmark. The principal finding of this thesis is that M&A transactions should improve the long-term financial and operating performance of merging firms to reflect that accounting performance can capture real economic creations. After controlling for well documented governance mechanisms and deal characteristics, the relationship between concentrated ownership and the level and change in operating cash flow returns after takeovers is non-linear. Value creating deals are associated with higher levels of concentration consistent with decreasing agency costs as the large shareholder’s wealth invested in the acquiring firm increases. Further, separation of ownership and voting rights leads to greater value destruction; acquiring firms with controlling CEO make significant improvements in post acquisition performance after controlling pre-performance; and the presence of CEO-Chairman duality and board size are both significantly negatively associated with acquisition operating performance. This thesis also finds, although all acquiring firms are from English origin countries, that the greater investor protection, as measured by the initial anti-director right index in La Porta et al. (1998) and revised anti-director rights index in Djankov et al. (2006) has a positive impact on operating cash flow returns from acquisitions. However, this thesis does not document any differential performance with respect to the extra- legal systems of Dyck and Zingales (2004) and the anti-self-dealing index of Djankov et al. (2006).

Increasingly there is debate concerning the number of board memberships a person can hold before loss of quality in their work. Previous research has not reached consensus regarding the effect of busy directors on firm performance. We therefore hypothesize there are modifying factors affecting that relationship, namely firm size and the presence of concentrated ownership. We designed a quantitative study to study first the effect of busyness on firm performance in Swedish listed companies, and secondly, to study the effect of the modifying factors on that relationship. It was found that busyness is positively related with firm performance measured by Tobin’s Q, and that concentrated ownership affects that relationship such that companies with more concentrated ownerships also have higher Tobin’s Q values. There was however partial support that firm size is a negative modifier on the relationship between busyness and firm performance. Overall our results indicate that more regulation that limits board busyness is not currently warranted. / Det debatteras alltmer hur många styrelseuppdrag en styrelseledamot kan ha innan det börjar påverka kvaliteten på deras arbete negativt. Tidigare forskning har inte nått ett enhetligt svar på frågan om effekten av många styrelseuppdrag och ett företagets prestation. Vi tror därför att det finns modifierande variabler som inverkar på detta förhållande, nämligen företagets storlek och om företaget har en koncentrerad ägarkrets. Vi genomförde en kvantitativ studie för att undersöka effekten av många styrelseuppdrag på företagens prestation bland Svenska bolag noterade på Stockholmsbörsen. Våra resultat tyder på att ledamöter med många uppdrag har en positiv inverkan på måttet Tobin’s Q och att bolag med en hög ägarkoncentration påverkar detta samband än mer positivt. Det fanns delvis underlag för att företagets storlek påverkade sambandet negativt. Överlag indikerar våra resultat att utökad reglering som begränsar antalet styrelseuppdrag inte är motiverat i dagsläget.

Bakgrund: Corporate Governance även kallad bolagsstyrning, är något som dagligen berör företag och utgör därmed en central del inom företagsorganisationer. Den teori som blivit mest uppmärksammad inom bolagsstyrning är agentteorin, som förklarar intressekonflikter mellan agent-principalen i ett bolag. Tidigare studier har visat på skillnader i länders bolagsstyrning, främst mellan de anglosaxiska och europeiska länderna gällande ägarstrukturen. För att motverka intressekonflikter som agentteorin uppmärksammar har olika riktlinjer för god bolagsstyrning, i form av koder, tillkommit som kompletterar lagstiftningen.   Syfte: Syftet med studien är att undersöka hur börsnoterade bolag på OMX30 Stockholmsbörsen förhåller sig till svensk kod för bolagsstyrning. Studien ämnar även att ta reda på om det finns något mönster mellan bolagens ägarstruktur och hur företagen väljer att följa Koden. Metod: För att kunna besvara studiens undersökningsfrågor avser studien att använda sig av en kvalitativ innehållsanalys med en deduktiv ansats. Undersökningen har genomförts genom att granska offentlig information i form av årsredovisningar, bolagsstyrningsrapporter samt företagshemsidor för studiens valda företag, som finns noterade på OMX30 Stockholmsbörsen mellan åren 2013-2017. Slutsatser: Den genomförda undersökningen visar på att samtliga bolag i studien väljer att följa svensk kod för bolagsstyrning utan avvikelser, där bolag med ett spritt ägande utgör en majoritet. Däremot visar undersökningen ingen signifikant trend på en minskad eller ökad avvikelse från Kodens riktlinjer från åren 2013–2017. Det finns ingen ägarstruktur som utgör en majoritet bland studiens undersökta bolag, utan fördelar sig någorlunda jämnt bland företagen. Studien visar även på att bolagen avviker mest från kodreglerna 2.4 och 9.2. / Background: Corporate Governance is something that concerns companies regularly and is forming a central part of corporate organizations. Agency-theory is the most attentive theory in Corporate Governance, which explains the differ goals and interests between the agents and principals in a company. Previous studies have shown differences between anglosaxisk and european countries, concerning the ownership structure.To prevent interest conflicts in companies several policies, presented as Codes have been presented in different countries.    Purpose: The purpose of this study is to analyze how companies on the OMX30 Stockholm Stock Exchange, apply the main principles of the Swedish Corporate Governance Code. The study also aims to review if there is any pattern regarding the companies ownership structure and how the companies choose to follow the Code. Method: In order to examine and answer the questions of this study, the study intends to use a qualitative content approach with a deductive approach. The study has been conducted by reviewing public information from annual reports, corporate governance reports and websites for the selected companies during the years 2013-2017. Conclusion: The findings of the study indicates that most of the companies apply the Swedish Code of Corporate Governance without any deviations, where companies with a dispersed ownership is a majority. The study does not show any significant trend of a decreased or increased deviation from the code during the years 2013-2017. There is no ownership structure constituting a majority of the study’s investigated companies. The most common deviations in this study are 2.4 and 9.2 from the Swedish Code.

The ownership structure in Sweden is characterized by a few controlling owners who often base their ownership of a lower capital investment than in many other countries. The separation of ownership and control is determined by control-boosting mechanisms and is a constantly debated topic. These mechanisms are used to control companies without having to bear the bulk of the capital, and the criticism centers around concerns that companies with control-boosting mechanisms are not managed as well as companies without them. The purpose of the study was to examine the use of control enhancing mechanisms and its effect on the market value of Swedish companies on Nasdaq Stockholm. The study adopted a quantitative form with hypotheses testing. The data collection has been made through annual reports of the sample and then statistically tested in SPSS through multiple regression. The use of vote-strong shares was shown to have a strong positive effect on the value of a company. Minor effects proven came from the difference between the largest owner's voting share and capital contribution, and of the percentage of the total votes held by the largest owner. These two, however, counteracted each other in approximately equal amounts. Not offering their vote-strong shares to on the public exchange is suggested to be strongly negative, but this could not be ascertained. Type of ownership and age were both insignificant in their ability to explain company value.