Seed technology ventures require external sources of debt and equity funding, once they have exhausted founders personal resources, to achieve their potential economic impact. The primary source of equity finance for seed ventures is from Business Angels who invest their own money in the company and frequently provide additional sources of assistance to the entrepreneur. Once seed ventures have completed their business plans, however informally, they pitch their opportunity to potential investors, However, less than three per cent of these pitches to Business Angels are successful. It is suggested that a major reason for this low success rates is a lack of understanding by pitching entrepreneurs of how Business Angels make their investment decisions. Investigating how Business Angels make their investment decisions will identify some of the causes of this high failure rate. In turn this will help to suggest ways for entrepreneurs to increase their likelihood of successful interactions with investors. Real-time techniques that involve observing successive interactions between five Business Angels and 150 pitching entrepreneurs are used to gather data on the investment decision-making process. The technique of observational interaction has been used in psychological research to observe interpersonal relationships and their development within the context of a complex process. This complex process can best be understood by breaking down the process into stages. In this research the initial interaction between entrepreneur and Business Angel is investigated. It is found that initially the Business Angels use a filtering technique to expeditiously reject most opportunities. This allows, allow them to concentrate their limited resources on further investigation of a few promising opportunities that appear to offer the highest potential return. The unique data set used in this research is taken from a reality TV show – CBC Dragons’ Den – where entrepreneurs participate in order to receive real investment from five wealthy individuals known as “Dragons”. Using the video material gathered during the recording of the show it is possible to observe how the five Dragons initially filter out most opportunities, before looking at more positive factors when determining their interest in investing in the few opportunities remaining. This filtering process involves a non-compensatory technique - Elimination-By-Aspects, where the presence of a single one of eight potential fatal flaws is sufficient reason for rejection. While this may not be the most accurate technique, it is the most cost effective approach to decision-making for the investors. To increase accuracy at later stages, the investors adopt a more compensatory decision-making approaches. Improved understanding of the staged nature of the process, and how Business Angels identify fatal flaws at the initial stage of the interaction, provides valuable insights to both investors and entrepreneurs. Armed with this knowledge they can take steps to eliminate such flaws and improve the overall efficiency of the decision making process. This in turn will lead to an increase in successful outcomes of such interactions and consequently the number of seed ventures that are successful in raising third-party funding from Business Angels.

The occurence of financial contagion can lead to hazardous results for financial institutions, financial markets as well as for the whole economy. Therefore it can have even serious economic effects on everybody´s life. That is why it is of great interest to deeper understand its characteristics. As classical finance theory seems not to give the best answers to this topic, the young academic field of behavioural finance can deliver new insights. The main purpose of this work is to provide an introduction mainly to professionals in portfolio and risk management and help them to tackle the problem of contagion at an early stage. Therefore not only aspects of behavioural finance are discussed, but the topic contagion is also brought into connection with network analyses and the current regulation process. Our paper can not answer all questions related to contagion, but it can help the reader to better understand its main aspects and enables him to delve deeper into this field.

With the increasing complexity of banking operations, the demand for extensive disclosure has advanced over the years. In 2007, the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) has consolidated and expanded disclosure requirements related to financial instruments in IFRS7. Arguably, the adoption of IFRS7 in Europe was met with substantial differences in implementation among countries. Moreover, IFRS7 was launched a few months before the global financial crisis hit Europe. This study examines the level of disclosure according to IFRS7 of 12 banks spread across Europe using their annual accounts from 2007-2010. The banks were chosen on the basis of their market capitalization by the end of 2007. A disclosure index based on IFRS7 was created for this study to evaluate the level of disclosure of the banks. After examining the disclosure level, this paper analyzes if there is a correlation between compliance on disclosure index and bank performance as measured by the Total Shareholder Return. This study aims to find out if a high compliance significantly affects performance in terms of TSR and if it helped banks weather the global financial crisis. The background part provides a broad perspective on disclosure, financial reporting, accounting standards, and IFRS7. It also provides a situation on bank run, and on the recent financial crisis. With the use of secondary data from published accounts of banks, the empirical study presents the disclosure level of banks and TSR performance. The findings suggest that most banks have a selective compliance and moderate fulfillmenton disclosure obligations. Inadequacy is particularly seen in areas where additional disclosure is required by using the implementation guidance of IFRS7. The correlation between compliance and performance is seen to be very minimal which suggests that a high disclosure during a financial crisis does not help prevent huge financial losses.

The profitability and the sources of the returns on momentum strategy have always been a popular subject of study in the financial field. Nevertheless, there exist significant discrepancies between the conclusions of the papers due to the difference in time period and the emphasis on average results. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to investigate momentum strategy with information uncertainty in Taiwan stock market during the period 1990-2009 given the basis on the research method of Jegardeesh and Titman(1993). The result shows that momentum strategy cannot averagely obtain significantly positive returns in the long run in Taiwan stock market and moreover it presents an enormous short-term reversal. Besides, in terms of business cycle, there is still no significant return on momentum strategy either; there will be significantly negative return when implementing momentum strategy in the recession of business cycle. On the other hand, from the view of investor psychological biases, it should be seen greater psychological biases owing to greater information uncertainty. As a result, a stronger stock price continuation may be observed under high information uncertainty stocks. However, the effect of information uncertainty is only pronounced among loser portfolios. To summarize, compared with the profitability and the stability of contrarian strategy, the findings support that there is no significant momentum phenomena in Taiwan stock market at all.

This paper probes into institutional investor¡¦s impact on Taiwan¡¦s stock market and its shareholding ratio in the relation of return. We aim to find out an effective return index of degree in order to provide another reference basis for investors. This research uses listed companies from 1999 to 2003 as sample. The analysis result shows that Taiwan has gone against the phenomenon of book-to-market and size effect in the past five years, and institutional investors¡¦ partiality is one of the reasons causing this phenomenon. The stock with high share of all kinds of institutional investors is expected to have high return in addition. In consideration of the momentum of the share of all kinds of institutional investors, we are unable to prove that the stock which has the positive momentum of share of all kinds of institutional investors will yield high return. The size factor and book-to-market ratio factor at the regular value prove whether institutional investors still have the ability to select stocks. The result proves that the group with high share of all kinds of institutional investors still has high return under the same book-to-market ratio and size factor, and proves that institutional investors indeed have better tactics in selecting stocks.

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Recently, the institution investors have affected greatly on the stock trading market. Besides the economic environment, the investors also use the information from the listed companies as one of the criteria for their evaluation. Thus, to conduct the investor relation (IR), the enterprises will make use of the public relations (P.R.) policy and make the company information open to the public through the mass media so that they can communicate with the institutional investors constantly as well as earn the support from them. The study is based on the collection of the secondary data analysis and the in-depth interview from the listed companies focusing on the relationship among the investors which expand the public relation policy via the message strategy, the mass media, the mutual interaction with the media and the public relation activities. Take the automotive crash parts manufacturers for example, in P.R. managing, the P.R. dep. must convince and be authorized by the managing dep. before demanding other sections of fully supporting the P.R. in setting the target, expanding the P.R. plans and evaluating its profit. In the P.R. policy and message strategy, the publicists have to control the firm information in hand, including polishing the open company info and creating more appealing topics to proceed with the mutual communication with the mass media and the institution investors. Of all the communication tools (inclusive of the current print media and electronic media), the press release, the press conferences, the investor conferences and the enterprise websites are indispensable for the mutual interaction between the listed company and the investors besides the compulsively- regulated message strategy.

<p>Problem: In the world of today’s business, there is a trend for investors not only to base their decisions whether to invest in a company on the basis of its financial results. These days more features are taken into consideration. Corporate identity is a crucial aspect to bear in mind for investors, as it demonstrates what the company is, how it works and where it is going. Corporate Communication is a process that allows companies to share their information with the stakeholders. Not every company is aware of the significance of communicating its corporate identity to investors. These represent a basis for the company, since their support is needed to achieve the organization’s objectives. Furthermore, communication of corporate identity to investors represents an opportunity for a company to achieve its goals. The importance and relation of corporate identity and communication to investors is becoming a relevant issue not only for them but also for stakeholders.</p><p>Purpose: The purpose of this thesis is to investigate corporate identity and its communication, as a key component, to investors.</p><p>Method: The authors have conducted a case study of the Chemical and Mining Company of Chile Inc. (SQM). A qualitative method approach has been used to achieve the purpose. Self-administered questionnaires have been used to gather empirical data.</p><p>Conclusion: The case study has led to conclusions on how important it is for SQM to communicate its corporate identity to investors. SQM’s corporate identity is seen as an instrument to differentiate, compete and communicate with investors. SQM’s visual identity is an instrument to communicate the evolution of the company. The company is using behavior, symbolism and communication as the main channels to transmit its corporate identity to investors. SQM’s investor relations show a clear awareness of the need for communication with its investors and financial stakeholders. This is supported by the development of their website and the information collected through the questionnaire. Finally, the authors conclude that corporate identity and its communication, as a key component, is essential for SQM. Its investor relations department and website show that it is very important for the company to communicate to investors its identity.</p>

<p>Problem: In the world of today’s business, there is a trend for investors not only to base their decisions whether to invest in a company on the basis of its financial results.</p><p>These days more features are taken into consideration. Corporate identity is a crucial aspect to bear in mind for investors, as it demonstrates what the company is, how it works and where it is going. Corporate Communication is a process that allows companies to share their information with the stakeholders. Not every company is aware</p><p>of the significance of communicating its corporate identity to investors. These represent a basis for the company, since their support is needed to achieve the organization’s objectives. Furthermore, communication of corporate identity to investors represents an opportunity for a company to achieve its goals. The importance and relation of corporate identity and communication to investors is becoming a relevant issue not only for them but also for stakeholders.</p>

<p>Introduction: When the American investment bank Morgan Stanley suddenly decide to increase their target stock price of the Ericsson stock by 100 percent, it became the point of origin for our interest in investor relations. In this particular case the increase of target stock price was announced right after new Morgan Stanley analysts started covering the stock. Why this tremendous increase in target stock price, we will probably never know. Perhaps the new analysts perceived the information disclosed from Ericsson’s investor re-lations function different from the prior analyst, and ended up in adjusting the target stock price.</p><p>Problem: Stock prices today are very dependent on the market expectations of future company growth. Market actors estimate the potential growth by analysing information disclosed by the company. It has therefore become increasingly important for companies to manage their investor relations with a strategic marketing perspective to be able to meet the internal and external needs. Companies must also present themselves to investors in a way that appeals both on a rational and an emotional level. Once new investors are attracted and old ones are kept, companies must constantly communicate about their performance to uphold investors trust and there by creating or maintain long-term relationships.</p><p>Purpose: The purpose is to explore if and how a marketing perspective is applicable when managing investor relations in traded companies.</p><p>Method: This study has been conducted with qualitative research method. Collection of empirical data has been done through six semi-structured interviews with directors and managers whom all work with investor relations for their respective company. The six par-ticipating companies are all traded on the Stockholm stock exchange. The collected data were first analysed with the Kotler, Kartajaya & Young (2004) model and secondly ana-lyzed from a relationship marketing point of view.</p><p>Analysis: The analysis shows that our sample of companies subconsciously work in align-ment with the Kotler et al. (2004) model and that they also work with different types of re-lationship marketing. Together this provides a holistic image of how traded companies work with a marketing perspective in their investor relations.</p><p>Conclusion: After having analysed our empirical findings it is our belief that a marketing perspective is applicable when managing investor relations.</p>