This thesis addresses the long-standing debate about the ability of investors in public listed companies to significantly influence or even control certain aspects of board and management decision taking. Much of the recent interest in these issues has focused on increased public disclosure of boardroom practices and standards. In contrast, my research shows that informal relationships between companies and their major shareholders are playing an increasingly important role in influencing key aspects of corporate strategy, major financing and investment decisions, and board membership. The research was undertaken through: an analysis of the investment portfolios of the 50 largest fund managers investing in the shares of UK companies and the ownership of 297 of the UK's largest listed companies; in-depth interviews with 120 companies, fund managers and others concerned with the quality and regulation of company shareholder relationships and information flows; and studying the role of fund managers and other shareholders in the resignations of the CEOs of 24 case history companies. The growing importance of informal mechanisms of fund manager influence and networking means that shareholder influence no longer depends on the formation of coalitions of the size proposed by Scott, or the alignment of interests through formally constituted Shareholder Protection Committees. A model of 'extended ownership' describes how effective control may pass to the fund manager with the largest, but still sub-minority, shareholding It is also crucial to understand that investment decisions by fund managers are influenced by and related to a wide range of company and investor-specific factors. These are described and the impact of their interactions on shareholder behaviour discussed. This thesis is relevant to the current debate about the public role that should be taken by institutional fund mangers in the process of corporate governance. Models of investor behaviour which assume that fund managers are a homogenous investor type or which do not take into account the key role of informal influence mechanisms are therefore of limited value.

Research report to the SBL, Unisa, Midrand. / The research project aimed to establish whether corporate governance is important to investors from a value perspective. The implications and recommendations for further research were provided.

Research report to the SBL, Unisa, Midrand. / The research project aimed to establish whether corporate governance is important to investors from a value perspective. The implications and recommendations for further research were provided.

No abstract available. / Dissertation (MCom)--University of Pretoria, 2013. / gm2014 / Auditing / unrestricted

At present, corporate social responsibility has become an important area of modern corporateresearch theory, and the development of CSR activities all over the world is remarkable.While the relationship between corporate social responsibility and corporate financialperformance is still ambiguous.This study reviewed the development of corporate social responsibility and literatures whichfocused on related researches; used the stakeholder theory as the theoretical basis and contentanalysis as the method basis; chose the accounting indicators of 839 Chinese listed companiesin 2010 as samples; then did regression analysis to measure the relationship between Chinesecompanies’ social responsibilities and their financial performance.According to the research results, except implementing the social responsibilities toshareholders has outstanding positive impact on Chinese listed companies’ financialperformance and implementing social responsibilities to employees has relatively positiveimpact; the implementations of social responsibilities to other stakeholders have no signallyimpact on Chinese listed companies’ financial performance. These results show that the CSRsituation in China is still not optimistic. / Program: Magisterutbildning i företagsekonomi

This study builds on the paper by Arquette, Brown, and Burdekin (2008) and asks whether the factors which they find to be significant in influencing the differential between the share prices of Chinese securities traded on their home market in Shanghai versus share prices observed offshore in Hong Kong and New York have varying degrees of influence when compared across industries. This paper focuses on Chinese companies listed on both the Shanghai and Hong Kong Stock Exchanges and finds that the proxy variables of expected exchange rate change, relative market sentiment, and relative company sentiment are significant in determining the average discount observed and that their effects do indeed vary significantly from industry to industry.

Capital structure and companies’ performance are important to corporate finance. Therefore, firms take different strategies to adjust capital structure to get a better firm performance. However still the studies mostly conducted in one country setting or neglect the angle from listed companies across countries. This thesis encompasses 2 developed countries (Germany and Sweden) and a developing country (China) to test the impact from capital structure to firm performance of period 2003-2012 with more than 1200 listed companies in Germany and Sweden and more than 1000 listed companies in China. The result shows capital structure has a significant negative effect to firm performance in China, whereas, significant positive effect in 2 European countries before financial crisis happened in 2008. I also find institutional factors and economic crisis will affect this relationship too.

Risk disclosure is an important issue, firstly to prevent future unexpected bankruptcies and economic scandals, secondly to create trust between a company and its stakeholders. Given the importance of the issue, previous literature has mainly focused on quantity of risk disclosures. In this dissertation, both quality and quantity of risk disclosures in the annual reports of 65 companies listed on the Nasdaq OMX Stockholm exchange are analyzed. The objectives are to describe the degree of risk disclosures and to understand whether the quality and quantity of this information can be explained by size, industry and/or performance of the company. By conducting a content analysis of the annual reports, we explored if the required risk information was disclosed (quantity) and how it was disclosed (quality). Afterwards, a statistical analysis was conducted in order to obtain a deeper understanding of the results from our content analysis. The findings of our study are that both quality and quantity of risk disclosures in our sample are only half as good as they should be according to requirements in the Swedish context. We found that there is a difference in quality and quantity of risk disclosures between two of the industry categories; Energy and Materials, where the first mentioned is the best and the second the worst. We did not find significant correlations between the quality and quantity of risk disclosure and the size or the performance for the whole sample. Still, we found some differences in both quality and quantity of risk disclosure information when looking at smaller parts of our sample. Size has a significant impact on both quality and quantity of risk disclosures within the Industrials and Information Technology companies. Among Information Technology companies, also performance has a significant impact on the quantity of risk disclosure.

Bakgrund: Miljöredovisningen är ett sätt för företagen att beskriva sitt miljöarbete. Den har fått allt större betydelse för företagen i takt med att miljöfrågorna blivit allt viktigare hos intressenter och allmänheten. Det gäller för företagen att visa att man tar ett miljö- och samhällsansvar för att skapa trovärdighet och förtroende i samhället.   Syfte:                                  Att ge läsaren en bild över hur och varför miljöredovisningen ser ut som den gör och vad företagen, som associeras med betydande miljöpåverkan, väljer att fokusera på i sina miljöredovisningar.  Metod:                               En kvalitativ studie som grundar sig i legitimitetsteorin och institutionell teori har utförts. Vi har undersökt litteratur, vetenskapliga artiklar, miljöredovisningar samt fört intervjuer med personer som har behörig kompetens.  Slutsats:                             Studien visar på hur viktig miljöredovisningen är för företagen som associeras med betydande miljöpåverkan. Företagen belyser det viktiga i att kunna vara transparent och visa intressenter och allmänheten att man tar miljöfrågor på största allvar. Studien visar även på hur yttre faktorer påverkar utformningen av miljöredovisningen så som förväntningar och institutionella tryck. Studien visar även på vad företagen fokuserar på i sina miljöredovisningar så som; energieffektivisering, minskning av utsläpp, miljökostnader, miljöinvesteringar, upprättandet av miljömål, miljöstrategier och miljöaktiviteter. / Background:                    The environmental reports are a way for companies to describe their environmental efforts. The environmental reports have become increasingly important for the companies, as the environmental issues have become a priority issue to the general population. Companies now have to show that they can take an environmental and social responsibility in order to build credibility and trust of the society.  Purpose:                            In order to give the reader a picture of how and why environmental reports looks like they do and what companies associated with a negative impact on the environment, chooses to focus on in their environmental reports.  Method:                             A qualitative study based on the legitimacy theory and the institutional theory is conducted in this thesis. A review and examination of literature, scientific articles, environmental reports and engaging interviews with people who have qualified skills in the subject was made.  Conclusion:                       This study demonstrates the importance of the environmental reports for the companies associated with significant environmental impacts. It highlights the importance of being transparent and demonstrates to stakeholders and the public the importance of taking environmental issues seriously. The study also shows how external factors like expectations and institutional pressures affects the general design of the environmental reports. The study also shows what companies are focusing on in their environmental reports such as; energy efficiency, emission reduction, environmental costs and the establishment of environmental goals and strategies.

The increasing use of the internet has created a new opportunity for companies to disseminate different types of information to their current and potential investors via the internet. This type of voluntary disclosure, Corporate Internet Reporting (CIR), can improve the disclosure quality and the transparency to satisfy all users’ needs. Furthermore, corporate governance has attracted considerable global attention, especially after the collapses that have occurred in the financial markets. Recently, a growing interest has evolved in exploring corporate governance in emerging markets due to the increased demand for transparency by stakeholders. To provide new insights, this study aims to explore the extent of CIR, examine its relationship with some corporate governance and firm characteristics variables, and to determine the impact of CIR on firm financial performance. These associations are investigated by employing a quantitative method dependant on a multi-theoretical framework. The study uses a self-constructed disclosure index, which includes 196 items, to measure the CIR of 170 Saudi listed companies. The findings indicate that the level of CIR is, on average, moderate compared to their counterparts in developed countries. Further, the empirical results reveal that firms which are large in size, with low liquidity rate, distribute dividends, have board which is meet less frequently and have less independent members in the audit committee are more likely to have high CIR level. In addition, the results indicate that firm growth, leverage, industry type, audit type, board size, board independence, role duality, block holder ownership, directors ownership, institutional ownership, government ownership, audit committee size and audit committee frequency of meeting appear to be insignificant predictors for CIR total. However, the findings show that the significance of these variables varies among the CIR components: content, presentation, timeliness, usability and audit. Finally, it is statistically evident that CIR has no significant impact on firm financial performance in Saudi listed companies. These findings suggest that further effort is required to enhance the awareness of good corporate governance and that other variables may be more relevant to CIR in the Saudi context.