Bakgrund   Bakgrunden ger uppsatsen en kort förklaring till vad risk är, vilka faktorer som bidragit till att riskrapportering blivit en viktig del av svenska företags årsredovisningar samt vilka riktlinjer som finns vid framtagande av risker. Syfte  Studiens syfte är att undersöka huruvida ett företags storlek påverkar hur många riskkategorier företag behandlar i sin årsredovisning. Dessutom syftar studien till att undersöka om företagens bransch påverkar hur många risker som tas upp i årsredovisningen. Vårt bidrag till forskningen är att se om storlek samt bransch kan förklara hur många riskkategorier som tas upp i årsredovisningen. Metod  Studien använder sig av en kvantitativ forskningsmetod med en deduktiv ansats där två hypoteser formats med hjälp av tidigare forskning. Studien använder sig av en innehållsanalys på 100 stycken börsnoterade företag. Den insamlade empirin kommer från respektive företags riskavsnitt i deras årsredovisning. Materialet har sedan kodats om i SPSS till olika variabler där studien sedan använder sig av en multivariat regressionsanalys för att få fram statistiska resultat.  Slutsats  Studien visar att storleken på företaget har betydelse för hur många riskkategorier företagen redovisar i sina riskavsnitt, större företag involverar generellt sett fler riskkategorier än mindre företag. Likaså visar studien att företagens bransch påverkar till viss del vilka olika riskkategorier som involveras i årsredovisningen. / Background The background gives the paper a short explanation as to what a risk is, what factors have contributed to risk disclosures becoming an essential part of annual reports and what guidelines are in place for risk reporting. Purpose The study aims to investigate whether company size affects how many risk categories a company discloses in the annual report. Furthermore the study also aims to investigate whether the industry type of a company affects the amount of risk categories disclosed in the annual report.   Method  The study uses a quantity based research strategy with a deductive approach where two hypotheses are formed based on prior scientific findings. The study uses content analysis which includes 100 listed companies. The empiric data is collected from each company’s risk section in their annual report. The material was later coded in SPSS to their different variables where the study uses a multiple regression analysis to collect statistical results Conclusion Our study shows that the company's size is related to how many risk categories companies disclose in their annual report, larger companies generally involve more risk categories than smaller companies. Furthermore the study concludes that a company’s industry in certain cases affects the amount of risk categories that is incorporated in the annual report.

Banks have a vital role in the society-wide green transition. However, the field of green finance is relatively unexplored in academia. Our study aims to extend the knowledge of green corporate loans by investigating what soft and hard information Swedish banks use to overcome the information asymmetry in the lending decision and what role the information plays. Based on fragmented literature, a tentative model is created, and used to form the study. The study adopts a qualitative research strategy and semi-structured interviews were held with respondents from the four largest banks in Sweden. Using the collected data, the tentative model was corroborated and adjusted, resulting in a finalised model. The study found that the following information components are used to evaluate green corporate loans: financial statements, collaterals, credit score, owners, character, micro and macro analysis, ESG approach and green criteria. Although most emphasis is put on hard information, soft information is also necessary for banks to make a lending decision. The study has multiple practical contributions relating to challenges posed by soft information, and the loan assessment. Theoretically, the study contributes with a baseline for future studies investigating the topic of green corporate loans.

Företagande har nästan alltid cirkulerat kring att vara så kostnadseffektivt som möjligt såvälsom att vinstmaximera. Men under senare år har intresset för företags ansvarstagandegällande miljö, sociala faktorer och bolagsstyrning ökat från både intressenter och aktieägare.Även fast insatserna rörande dessa frågor medför ökade kostnader för företagen, kan det ivissa fall vara lönsamt, eftersom bland annat kostnaden av eget kapital tenderar att minska. Vivar således intresserade att undersöka huruvida företags årsredovisningar och denmedföljande hållbarhetsrapporten har något informationsinnehåll för investerare, samt omdetta innehåll skiljer sig åt beroende på om företagen påvisar höga eller låga ESG-poäng. Föratt fastställa uppsatsens frågeställning undersöker vi handelsvolymen för företag listade påOMX Nasdaq Stockholm mellan åren 2017-2021. Vidare applicerar vi eventstudiemetodensom vårt val av metod för att upptäcka en eventuell förekomst av avvikelsevolym.Eventperioden sträcker sig mellan 1 dag före till 1 dag efter eventet, emedanestimeringsperioden tar plats 10 till 60 dagar före och efter eventet. Resultatet indikerar attföretags ESG-poäng inte verkar ha någon inverkan på avvikelsvolymen vid annonsering avårsredovisningen. / The fundamentals of business have almost always focused on the priority to be as costefficient as possible and to maximize profits. But during recent years there's been anincreasing interest from both stakeholders and shareholders, regarding companies’ actions onenvironmental, social and governance responsibility. Although it inflicts extra expenses forbusiness to address these issues, it can sometimes be beneficial, since for instance it canlower the cost of equity capital. Therefore we were interested in researching whether therelease of companies' full-year reports and the accompanying mandatory CSR-report, had anyinformation content for investors, and also whether the content differs between companieswith high and low ESG scores. To determine the issue of the thesis we decided to investigatethe trading volume of companies listed on OMX Nasdaq Stockholm between years2017-2021, and performed an event study as our choice of method to detect any abnormaltrading volume. The event period was set to 1 day before and after the event, whereas theestimation period took place 10 to 60 days before and after the event. The result indicates thatcompanies’ ESG score does not seem to have any effect on abnormal trading volume on dayof release.

This thesis examines the initial performance of private equity-backed IPOs in relation to non-private-equity-backed IPOs listed on Nasdaq Stockholm and Nasdaq First North Growth Market during the years 2011-2021. It further measures the effect of independent variables on the return after the first day- and first week of trading as well as if the first day performance impacts the first week performance. Previous research finds that IPOs in general are underpriced, and that private equity-backed IPOs tend to perform poorer than non-private-equity-backed IPOs on the first day of trading. Previous research further finds that underpriced IPOs have poor aftermarket performance since the issues usually decline during the first couple of days of trading, subsequently converging towards a lower price rapidly after listing, making it less profitable to invest in an IPO in the aftermarket. Univariate and multivariate analyses test this and the findings indicate that the first day return impacts the first week performance. It also finds that larger private equity-backed IPOs are underpriced and show poorer first day performance compared with larger non private-equity-backed-IPOs. Yet, this is not found to hold for the total sample covering all offering sizes. However, our findings cannot confirm that private equity-backed IPOs would show poorer performance compared with non-private-equity-backed IPOs after the first week of trading. Among the independent variables, the nominal offer price was found to have a significant impact on the first day return alongside with which stock exchange the company was listed on.

Insider trading occurs daily and previous studies show that trading might even increase during volatile times. The market becomes especially volatile and uncertain during an economic crisis, such as the Covid-19 pandemic. In addition to that, previous studies show that the information asymmetry between insiders and outsiders increases during economic crises, giving the insiders an information advantage. Due to that, we investigate whether insiders, specifically CEOs, can use their advantage to predict future profitability during the Covid-19 pandemic in comparison to a time prior. The data consists of insider transactions on the Swedish stock market during 2017 and 2020. To test our hypothesis we use multiple linear regressions to see if there are any connections between our variables. Our results indicate that there is a connection between the volume of insider transactions and whether the pandemic is ongoing or not. However, our results do not indicate that insiders' ability to predict future profitability increases during an economic crisis. Despite that, the results seemingly differ depending on the industry.

This paper aims to analyze the phenomenon of adverse selection of its presence and potential short-term impact on the Swedish stock market. Adverse selection refers to a situation where information asymmetry among market participants might lead to potential imbalances in information and unfairness among all market participants. The primary objective of this paper is to determine and analyze the potential existence of adverse selection and to explore its effects on the short-term trading volume before announcements.  This study's research design and approach are through data collection, to analyze the relationship between traded volume and disclosures. Five highly traded stocks, Atlas Copco AB, Evolution AB, Swedbank AB, Hexagon AB and AB Volvo are selected for the analysis, representing different sectors. A historical data analysis method and event studies are being used to identify abnormal fluctuations in trading volume before announcements. Data on volume and stock prices are collected over one year, between 11 May 2022 - 11 May 2023. By utilizing various statistical methods and econometric techniques, abnormal volume fluctuations before announcements could be measured and analyzed.  This paper concludes the existence of short-term adverse selection on the Swedish stock market cannot confidently be determined considering this analysis only, as indicated by nonsignificant abnormal fluctuations in the short-term trading volume before announcements. However, the results of the data collection in the period between 11 May 2022 - 11 May 2023, on five high-market capitalization companies, still emphasize and illuminate the importance of ensuring and maintaining efficient and fair markets.

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Research on Voluntary Information Disclosure (VID) has been of interest in several disciplines including, but not limited to, entrepreneurship, accounting, finance, law, and marketing. Although there has been extensive research on VID aimed at financial market investors, scant research in marketing exists on VID targeted at prospective business partners that can influence firm future performance significantly. Financial and marketing disclosures have been advocated for by investors and public policymakers as they mitigate the adverse selection problems between the firm and its stakeholders (e.g., investors, customers, and prospective channel partners). Managers are, however somewhat skeptical about its outcomes because of the cost of disclosures (i.e., ex-ante costs of collecting, processing and disseminating the information, ex-post costs of conflicts and litigations, competitive position and proprietary costs). My dissertation consists of three essays on voluntary disclosure of performance metrics in marketing channels and aims to enhance our understanding of the antecedents and consequences of such VIDs. The first essay examines the antecedents of ex-ante VID for standardized contracts in marketing channels. Prior literature in accounting, entrepreneurship, and marketing has investigated drivers of information disclosures to analysts, investors, and customers. Nonetheless, this study bridges the gap in examining why some firms disclose information to prospective channel partners when it cost them to do so and makes the firms vulnerable to competitors. If the disclosure is a signal of quality, we are also interested in knowing whether it is a substitute for other signals of quality or a complement. I draw on signaling and institutional theories to develop a theoretical framework and empirically test it through econometric analyses of multi-sector panel data for the U.S. franchising industry. The results suggest that firms (e.g., franchisors) make such disclosures to prospective business partners (e.g., franchisees) in order to signal profitability of partnering, to attract financial and managerial resources, and develop their entrepreneurial networks. This study contributes to signaling theory literature by investigating organizational quality signaling, providing empirical evidence for drivers of multiple signaling and shedding light on the conflicting views on substitutability or complementarity of multiple quality signals. The study has implications for managers who wish to attract potential business partners through signaling profitability of their business. Furthermore, there are some insights for regulators on the debate on making voluntary disclosures mandatory. The second essay examines the performance consequences of i) signaling through ex-ante voluntary disclosure of performance metrics and ii) screening through selection standards, in the formation stage of new partnerships in marketing channels. It is essential for many entrepreneurial business networks to expand their channel by attracting business partners while still preventing low-quality partners from joining the network. However, information asymmetry between the two parties introduces a double-sided adverse selection problem to the relationship. In other words, the heterogeneous quality - the ability to perform the job - of each party (i.e., the focal firm or the prospective partner) is unknown to the other party. To date, most of the empirical studies have addressed the issue from only one side, either from the perspective of the buyer or the supplier, and have assumed that the other side is open to the relationship. However, in a selective inter-firm relationship that both parties have the option to select the other party, adverse selection problems should be resolved for both of them to enhance the performance of the partnership. To bridge this gap in the literature (i.e., to mitigate double-sided adverse selection problems), I propose a novel framework based on signaling and transaction cost theories. This study suggests and empirically examines a complementary effect of the simultaneous use of signaling and screening on the firm performance. I integrate secondary data from various sources to shape a unique multi-sector panel data set that allows for assessment of the effects of these predictors on firm performance over time through a rigorous econometric model. Contrary to some claims in the extant literature, the results demonstrate that rigorous screening process hurts the firm performance unless it is combined with a proper quality signaling mechanism. This study contributes to the B2B marketing literature and provides implications for practitioners by shedding light on the performance implications of channel governance mechanisms such as signaling and screening. Further, it provides empirical support for the effects of B2B marketing strategies on firm sales revenue growth. The third essay looks closely into the voluntary disclosure of performance metrics. In the previous studies, the decision to disclose is operationalized as a binary variable of whether a firm discloses or not. In the absence of comprehensive regulation, disclosure strategies are subject to significant variation amongst firms, but can also vary over time within an individual firm. Through a content analysis of disclosure documents and scrutiny of the different components that comprise them, I explore the impact of disclosure content on firm performance. This study attempts to reconcile conflicting views of managers, investors, analysts, and regulators. On the one hand, VID should positively impact firm performance through mitigating information asymmetry. On the other hand, skeptical managers make the argument that VID negatively impacts a firm’s performance through costs of preparation, dissemination, potential litigation, and competition. Using a sample of publicly traded restaurant chains in the U.S., I empirically assess firm performance as a function of the disclosure strategy and its interactions with the firm’s characteristics and governance mechanisms. I collect independent variables from the firms’ disclosures through content analysis of public documents and obtain performance metrics of the firms in the stock market from Compustat. This study provides a novel context within which to investigate whether and how financial markets look at the firm’s disclosure behavior in dealing with its prospective channel partners, and it contributes to marketing-finance interface literature. My dissertation is positioned in the marketing strategy-entrepreneurship interface domain and is a multi-faceted study that looks at the phenomenon of VID from different angles and provides implications for several stakeholders. / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) / Distribution channel strategy has a long-term effect on firm performance, is associated with considerable irreversible costs, and can constitute a sustainable asset and competitive advantage for firms. Information asymmetry among the distribution channel members has been known as the basis of opportunistic actions in such exchange relationships. My dissertation research investigates drivers and consequences of information disclosure strategies and is focused on the firms’ voluntary disclosure of performance metrics at the inter-firm relationship formation stage of developing marketing channels. This dissertation consists of three inter-related essays. In the first one, I study drivers of voluntary information disclosures to prospective channel partners. Then, I investigate the performance consequences of such disclosures and their interactions with channel governance mechanisms such as screening, in the second study. Since firms are heterogeneous in the content of their disclosures, in the third study, I conduct a content analysis of the firm’s disclosures to understand its influence on firm performance. Based on Organizational Economics theories and Institutional Theory, I develop my theoretical frameworks and test them empirically using archival data. The empirical context for my work is the franchising industry because it is the most common type of partner-based retail system and is a significant component of the US economy as well as other developed countries and emerging economies. The research findings offer both theoretical and practical implications for researchers and practitioners and contribute to the literatures on signaling and transaction cost theories as well as information disclosure and franchising.

Conducting an IPO allows companies to obtain external capital from investors in exchange for ownership stakes. The capital raised in an IPO is intended to finance the company's economic growth and expansion. A challenge regarding IPOs is the pricing of shares. The study aims to investigate whether there is a relationship between industry affiliation and underpricing in IPOs on Nasdaq Stockholm and First North. The study will also examine whether underpricing differs between IPOs on First North and Nasdaq Stockholm and whether there is a relationship between market conditions and underpricing. The sample of the study consists of 197 companies operating in the Data/IT, Real Estate, Finance, Manufacturing Industry, and Pharmaceutical industries between 2017-2023. The study uses a chi 2 test and t-tests in order to answer the research questions.  The results of the study shows that there is a statistically significant relationship between underpricing and the Swedish stock market. The average underpricing was 8,99% for all IPOs in the sample. Furthermore, the study's results indicate that there is no significant relationship between industry affiliation and underpricing. Future research could examine how IPOs in the selected industries perform over time.

The general focus of my dissertation, which consists of two essays, is on how changes in the financial and economic environment surrounding a firm affect managerial incentives and firm policies regarding investment in physical capital, innovation, equity offerings, and repurchases. The first essay in my dissertation examines how product market competition affects firms' investment decisions. While competition among firms benefits consumers via lower prices, greater product variety, higher product quality, and greater innovation, recent studies provide evidence that competition has been declining in the U.S. economy over the past decade. The evidence shows that American firms' profits are at near-record levels relative to GDP and are persistent. Industries have become more concentrated as a result of mergers and acquisitions, and barriers to entry have risen and the rate of new entry has been declining for decades. Taking these findings at face value, we examine empirically whether companies feel less compelled to invest in physical capital and in research and development because they face fewer threats from rival firms. Using both traditional proxies and recently developed text-based measures of industry concentration, we show that firms operating in competitive industries invest significantly more in both physical capital and research and development relative to their peers in concentrated industries. We also report that the propensity to invest less by managers of monopolistic firms is partially mitigated by superior corporate governance that reduces the agency problem, and by certain product market characteristics such as low pricing power and low product differentiation/entry barriers. However, after accounting for all these mitigating factors, the negative association between industry concentration and investment persists. Our results are robust to including various control variables and exclusion of firms from industries that face significant competition from imports. The results are also robust to controlling for endogeneity caused by missing time-invariant and time-varying industry level factors that could potentially be related to both the level of concentration and investments. Overall, our results are consistent with the notion that firms in competitive industries have a greater incentive to invest and innovate to survive and thrive in a competitive environment relative to the managers of the firms in more concentrated industries whose incentive to invest and innovate is to maintain their monopoly rents. Our findings have obvious policy implications in that investment and hence economic growth is being adversely affected in the current era of increasing industry concentration and declining competition. The second essay in my dissertation investigates whether information contained in equity issues and buybacks is fully incorporated into prices such that the market reaction to subsequent earnings announcements is unrelated to those corporate actions. Korajczyk at al. (1991) argue that firms prefer to issue equity when the market is most informed about the quality of the firm to prevent adverse selection costs associated with new equity issues. This implies that equity issues tend to follow credible information releases contained in earnings announcements. However, analyzing a sample of 19,466 SEO pricing dates between 1970 and 2015 and 15,106 buyback announcements between 1994 and 2015 shows that a considerable number of equity offerings and repurchase announcements take place before the announcement of earnings. About 28% of buybacks and 32% of SEO pricings are made in the three weeks prior to an earnings announcement. Given these statistics, we examine whether these corporate actions provide information about upcoming earnings announcements (earnings predictability) to the extent that new information has not been fully incorporated into prices by market participants. We find evidence of earnings predictability: the market reaction to earnings following buyback announcements is higher by 5.1% than the reaction to earnings following equity issues over the (-1,+30) window when four-factor abnormal returns are used; the difference is 2.2% when unadjusted returns are considered. The results are robust to several alternate sample construction methodologies. There are at least two puzzling effects of earnings predictability that are difficult to reconcile with the market efficiency hypothesis. First, there is an incomplete adjustment to SEO pricings and buyback announcements that results in residual market reaction to earnings announcements. Second, prices continue to drift after earnings announcements: upward for buybacks and downward for SEO pricings. Unlike post-earnings announcement drift, the drift documented here does not depend on the market reaction to earnings announcement. We test several reasons for this anomalous behavior including prior returns, price, size of buyback or SEO, analyst forecast errors, and bid-ask spread. We find that information asymmetry proxies partially explain the persistence of earnings predictability following SEO pricings and buyback announcements. / Ph. D. / It is well documented that corporate investments in research and development (R&D) and physical capital are important drivers of economic growth and higher standards of living. Recent articles published by academic community and popular press have provided evidence that the overall competition among U.S. firms has declined. The evidence shows that concentration has increased in 75% of the US industries, the economy has lost about 50% of its publicly traded firms, and the rate of new-business formation has fallen. Given the documented association between corporate investments and economic growth & social welfare, a natural question arising would be whether declining competition is detrimental to investment in both physical capital and R&D. The first chapter of my dissertation aims to answer this question by examining whether companies feel less compelled to invest in physical capital and in R&D because they face fewer threats from rival firms. Our findings show that firms operating in concentrated industries invest significantly less in both physical capital and research and development relative to their peers in competitive industries, consistent with the notion that firms in competitive industries have a greater incentive to invest and innovate to survive and thrive in a competitive environment relative to the managers of the firms in more concentrated industries whose incentive to invest and innovate is to maintain their monopoly rents. Our findings have obvious policy implications in that investment and hence economic growth is being adversely affected in the current era of increasing industry concentration and declining competition. The wealth of the shareholders of publicly traded firms is tied to managers’ decisions about corporate actions such as equity offerings, buybacks, dividends, and mergers as these actions can potentially affect the stock prices and the value of shareholders’ portfolios. The second part of my dissertation investigates whether buybacks or equity offerings announced within a few weeks prior to earnings provide information about upcoming earnings announcements to the extent that new information has not been fully incorporated into prices by market participants. We find that earnings coming after equity offerings are likely to contain bad news and earnings coming after buybacks are likely to contain good news. This implies that buying the shares of the companies that announce a buyback before their earnings and short selling the shares of the companies that issue equity before their earnings will yield a significant return for the investors.