Tämän tutkielman tavoitteena on selvittää, millaisia eri mahdollisuuksia on toteuttaa yrityksen sukupolvenvaihdos ja miten osakas sekä yhtiö voivat valmistautua menettelyyn sekä mitä huojennuksia voidaan käyttää apuna. Sukupolvenvaihdosta tarkastellaan sekä luovutuksensaajan että -antajan näkökulmasta niin henkilö kuin osakeyhtiöissäkin. Juridiset, verotukselliset ja taloudelliset tekijät otetaan huomioon. Tutkimus on toteutettu perehtymällä aiheesta kertovaan kirjallisuuteen ja lakiteksteihin ja havainnollistamisen apuna on käytetty esimerkkejä. Suunnittelun ja valmistelun osa-alueina tutkitaan vero- ja rahoitussuunnittelua sekä erilaisia yritysjärjestelytoimenpiteitä. Yrityksen tai sen osan luovuttamista eli varsinaista toteutuvaa sukupolvenvaihdosta tutkitaan vastikkeellisesti, osittain vastikkeellisesti ja vastikkeettomasti tapahtuvissa luovutustilanteissa. Lainsäädännön mahdollistamat huojennukset tulo- sekä perintö- ja lahjaverotuksessa käsitellään sukupolvenvaihdoksen toteuttamista helpottavina apukeinoina.

Purpose: Over the past five years from 2008 to 2012, important economic metrics in the United States have been in weak levels, whereas CEO pay seems to go in spite of the economic situation, thence there is a demand for studying on the true status of the pay-for-performance and providing incentives for CEOs through aligning CEO interests with shareholder interests over this economic period. Therefore, this study investigates whether CEO pay is rewarded according to firm performance over this weak economy period, and compares the result with corresponding previous findings in order to find out the specification of pay-for-performance in this economic period. In a whole, this study devotes to supply useful information on providing CEO incentives through pay-for-performance over a period with weak economic metrics. Design: In the theoretical part, the principal-agent problem and its solutions are investigated. CEO pay is investigated for cash compensation, incentive compensation, total compensation and CEO firm-specific wealth. Firm performance is investigated for contemporaneous and lagged accounting performance and stock market performance. The empirical study adopts a quantitative test of pay-performance sensitivity to investigate the relationship between CEO pay and firm performances. Ordinary least square regressions are applied in the empirical analysis. Data: Ihe empirical analysis is based on two sets of observations: CEO compensation and firm financial information, which are both retrieved from Standard & Poor’s Compustat ExecuComp database for the S&P 1500 Index firms. The two sets of observations are matched. The bank, insurance and real estate companies (SIC codes 6000–6799) are excluded. Findings: Relative to previous findings, sensitivities between CEO pay and firm accounting performance are smaller which is driven by the looser pay-for-performance of CEO cash pay, whereas sensitivities between CEO pay and firm market performance are larger which is driven by the closer pay-for-performance of CEO incentive pay. The findings indicate that over weak economy period CEO cash pay is less used while CEO incentive pay is more frequently used to provide incentives for CEOs, and the ensuring function of base salaries tends to be more notable. This study also finds that CEO incentive pay is more significantly associated with prior performances over the period with weak economic metrics. In addition, when inside stockholdings are considered into CEO firm-specific wealth, negative and significant sensitivity is found for accounting performance whereas positive and significant sensitivity is found for market performance, which suggests that the raise of firm accounting performance cannot has enough positive effect on the value of CEO firm-specific wealth, and CEO firm-specific wealth is more closely tied to firm values for providing incentives for CEOs, Also, the considerable rise of CEO ownership is taken into account for the enhanced incentives.

Tilintarkastus alana on kokenut suuria mullistuksia Yhdysvalloissa ja Euroopassa 2000-luvun alussa ja sen jälkeen tapahtuneiden kirjanpitoskandaalien jälkimainingeissa. Näissä kirjanpitoskandaaleissa yritysten sisäiset valvontajärjestelmät pettivät ja näin estivät oikeellisen ja korkealaatuisen tilinpäätösraportoinnin. Skandaalien jälkeen on ympäri maailmaa pyritty tiukentamaan lainsäädäntöä ja näin palauttamaan sijoittajien luottamus yritysten julkistamaan taloudelliseen informaatioon. Yksi seuraus tästä pyrkimyksestä on Suomessa vuonna 2007 voimaan tullut uusi tilintarkastuslaki. Uusi tilintarkastuslaki on lisännyt tilintarkastajien tarkastus- ja raportointityötä ja näin ollen myös kustannuksia, mikä vaikuttaa tilintarkastuspalkkioihin nostavasti. Toisaalta sen esittelemä tilintarkastajan rotaatiovaatimus on koventanut tilintarkastusyhtiöiden keskinäistä kilpailutilannetta ajaen tilintarkastuksesta maksettuja palkkioita alemmalle tasolle. Tässä työssä pyritään tarkastelemaan vuoden 2007 lakimuutoksesta aiheutuneita palkkiovaikutuksia tilintarkastukselle. Tutkimuksessa tarkastellaan Suomen pörssiyhtiöiden vuosina 2005–2012 tilintarkastuksesta ja konsultoinnista maksamia palkkioita. Tutkimus pyrkii selvittämään, onko palkkioiden tasossa vallinnut ajanjakson aikana joku tietty trendi, ja onko vuonna 2007 voimaan tullut uusi tilintarkastuslaki vaikuttanut palkkioiden suuruuteen. Tarkastellaan myös sitä, mitkä tekijät vaikuttavat tilintarkastuspalkkioiden muodostumiseen ja suuruuteen sekä pyritään yleisesti kuvaamaan tilintarkastusta, sen tavoitteita ja tehtäviä sekä tilintarkastajan roolia asiakasyritykselle. Tutkielma kuvaa myös tilintarkastusta ohjaavia normeja sekä tilintarkastajan vastuuta suoritetuista tarkastuksista. Tutkimus on toteutettu taloustieteelliselle tutkimukselle tyypillisellä deduktiivisellä tutkimusotteella, jossa aiemmin tutkittua ilmiötä pyritään tarkastelemaan aiemman tutkimuksen mallien ja menetelmien kautta. Työssä käytetään kvantitatiivista tutkimusmenetelmää ja tutkimusmalliksi on valittu usean muuttujan regressiomalli. Tutkimusaineisto on saatu kokonaisuudessaan Oulun yliopistolla käytössä olevasta Worldscope-tietokannasta ja se on rajattu suomalaisten pörssiyritysten yritysvuosiin 2005–2012. Tutkimuksen teoreettinen osa summaa tärkeimpien tilintarkastuspalkkioiden suuruuteen vaikuttavien tekijöiden olevan asiakasyrityksen koko, kompleksisuus ja riskisyys. Muita tilintarkastuspalkkioiden tasoon vaikuttavia tekijöitä ovat esimerkiksi yrityksen omistusrakenne, sen sisäiset kontrollijärjestelmät sekä tilintarkastajan sukupuoli. Tutkimuksen empiirinen osuus tukee teoreettisen osan väitettä siitä, että tilintarkastuspalkkioihin vaikuttava tärkein yksittäinen tekijä on tarkastettavan yrityksen koko. Regressiomallin selitysaste tutkimuksessa oli 0,87. Tutkimuksessa kävi ilmi, että 2007 voimaan tullut uusi tilintarkastuslaki ei vaikuttanut nostavasti yritysten tilintarkastuksesta maksamiin palkkioihin. Tutkimuksen rajoitteena voidaan kuitenkin pitää sitä, että tutkimuksessa tilintarkastuspalkkioihin sisältyivät yritysten sekä tilintarkastuksesta että konsultoinnista maksamat palkkiot, mikä saattaa vääristää tuloksia ja vaikeuttaa niiden yleistettävyyttä.

Venture capital (VC) -käsitteellä tarkoitetaan pääomasijoittamista, joka kohdistuu aikaisen vaiheen innovatiivisiin ja nopeasti kasvaviin yrityksiin. Valuaatiolla tarkoitetaan VC-sijoituksen yhteydessä määräytyvää yrityksen oman pääoman markkina-arvoa. Tämän pro gradu -tutkielman tavoitteena on selvittää, mitkä tekijät vaikuttavat kohdeyhtiöiden valuaatioihin. Lisäksi selvitetään, millä menetelmillä VC-sijoituskohteen arvoa voidaan määrittää ennen sijoituksen tekemistä. Tutkimus koostuu kirjallisuuskatsauksesta sekä empiirisestä tutkimuksesta. Empiirinen tapausaineisto koostuu 15:stä suomalaisen sijoitusorganisaation vuonna 2013 tekemästä sijoituksesta. Tutkimusta varten haastateltiin kohdeorganisaation sijoitusmanagereita. Lisäksi kerättiin sijoituskohteisiin liittyvät taustatiedot. Aineisto analysoitiin sekä kvalitatiivisesti kuvaamalla haastatteluissa tunnistetut valuaatioihin vaikuttavat tekijät että kvantitatiivisesti muuttujien korrelaationanalyysin avulla. Empiirinen analyysi pääosin tukee teoriatarkastelussa saatua kuvaa valuaatioon vaikuttavista tekijöistä. Empiirisen analyysin perusteella tärkeimmät valuaatioon vaikuttavat tekijät ovat yrityksen kehitysvaihe, patentit ja aineeton omaisuus, yrittäjätiimi ja siinä erityisesti johdon verkostojen laajuus. Taseen loppusummalla mitattuna suuremmat yritykset nostavat suurempia rahoituskierroksia, ja niiden valuaatiot ovat suuremmat. Sijoittajan intresseissä on säilyttää yrittäjätiimillä motivoivan suuruinen omistusosuus yrityksestä, joka tietyissä tilanteissa vaikuttaa valuaatiota nostavasti. Tuloksia voidaan rajoitetusti yleistää koskemaan suomalaista VC-sijoitustoimintaa. Tulosten avulla voidaan hahmottaa VC-sijoituskohteiden valuaationmuodostuksen logiikka sekä tuotto-riski-analyysin kautta että käytännön sijoittamisprosessin näkökulmasta.

The 2008 financial crisis generated a heated debate over the role of fair value accounting (FVA) during the economic downturn. The debate has focused on the financial industry as it makes the most extensive use of FVA in its financial statements. The critics have argued that FVA provisions had exacerbated the crisis by forcing otherwise sound financial institutions to write down their assets to distorted market prices. The written-down prices can become benchmarks for other institutions, thus creating contagion effects within the economy. As the decreases in asset values depletes banks’ regulatory capital, it might force them to sell assets at the distorted prices. The defenders, on the other hand, argue that FVA did not have the effects alleged by the critics. This paper examines both sides of the debate and creates an empirical model to test the effects of fair value gains/losses on bank regulatory capital. I examine a sample of all US FDIC insured banks with both domestic and foreign offices which issue Call reports, over the period 2007–2011. I find that fair value gains/losses are significant determinants of changes in bank regulatory capital ratios. More specifically, realized gains/losses on AFS and HTM securities, and trading gains/losses are significant determinants of changes in bank capital adequacy as measured by the tangible common equity, the Tier 1 leverage, and the Tier 1 capital ratios. Additionally, unrealized gains/losses on AFS securities are significant determinants of changes in the tangible common equity ratio, but not the Tier 1 leverage ratio, or the Tier 1 capital ratio. I also find that the statistical significance of my findings does not result in economic significance. Despite the significant negative trends experienced by fair value gains/losses, the capital adequacy ratios remained largely unaffected during the crisis. My findings suggest that FVA had little to no role in amplifying the financial crisis of 2008.

Corporate political activity (CPA) in the US has received a significant amount of attention from academic research, especially because it involves billions of dollars yearly and because the public is concerned with its undue influence over the legislative process. The predominant view in the literature holds that CPA is positively associated with financial performance, however, evidence is mixed. Prior research also suggests that firms operating in a highly regulated industry, such as pharmaceutical firms, are more likely to engage in CPA. As such, benefits from CPA, or detrimental effects for that matter, should be most visible in such industries. From this stems the purpose and motivation of this study. The purpose of this study is to examine the effect of corporate political activity, as measured by the dollar amounts of PAC contributions and lobbying expenditures, on the financial performance of US public pharmaceutical firms in the period 1998–2013. The study is motivated by the lack of academic consensus regarding the nature of the relationship between CPA and financial performance and by contradictory empirical evidence on the subject. To this end, I conduct a two-stage regression analysis and find that, contrary to the predominant view in literature, CPA is significantly and negatively associated with firm financial performance, as measured by net income and income before extraordinary items. The findings can be best interpreted in the framework of the agency theory to be indicators of risky managerial decision-making, inadequate evaluation of political investments, lack of or insufficient monitoring, or personal managerial consumption of political expenditures.

This study examines an aspect of earnings management that I refer to as audit management. I define audit management as a client's strategic use of techniques (e.g., baiting tactics) to prevent auditors from discovering earnings management during the audit. Specifically, I examine whether two baiting tactics, diversionary statements and distracting errors, affect an auditor's ability to uncover an accounting error used to manage earnings. Auditors performed analytical review on financial statements that contained an earnings management error (i.e., an intentional error that results in the client meeting an earnings target). I manipulated whether management provided a diversionary statement that explicitly identified risk in other areas of the audit, and whether management seeded easier, distracting errors into those other areas, both of which were designed to lure the auditor away from the earnings management error. I found that when auditors were intentionally directed to error free accounts they were unlikely to uncover an earnings management error elsewhere in the financial statements. On the other hand, auditors were most accurate in identifying earnings management when they were directed to audit areas that contained distracting errors. These results suggest that managers can use certain baiting tactics to strategically manage the outcome of the audit, but that, in some circumstances, baiting tactics may actually make auditors more likely to uncover managed earnings.

The purpose of this study is to examine the approaches taken, and the negotiation decisions made, by professional auditors and clients when facing a revenue recognition conflict. Auditors and clients can encounter situations where their goals are materially different, leading to a potential conflict. How those conflicts are resolved is just beginning to be examined in the audit judgment literature. This study captures the negotiation decisions of both professional auditors and clients when they face the same conflict situation. The knowledge gained provides insight into the degree of flexibility inherent in auditor and client negotiation decisions, whether auditors and clients accurately perceive the other negotiating party's positions, the types of negotiation tactics used by auditors and clients, and the effects of opposition strategies on negotiation decisions. Auditors and clients read a scenario describing an ambiguous revenue recognition problem. Participants then responded to a series of questions designed to elicit their pre-negotiation and negotiation decisions. These included their goal and limit, perception of the other party's goal and limit, likelihood of using various negotiation tactics, and concern for themselves and for the other party. Subsequently, each participant read the opponent's initial communication for the revenue recognition problem. The opponent's communication was designed to convey two pieces of information: (1) the opponent's preferred financial reporting solution, and (2) the opponent's negotiation strategy. Each participant then completed a second questionnaire designed to capture any changes in their prior decisions. The results indicate that auditors and clients approach conflict resolution and make negotiation decisions in very different ways. Clients demonstrated a greater capacity to be flexible (wider solution sets), determined the auditor's goals and limits more accurately, were likely to use a wider variety of negotiation tactics, and adapted more to the auditor's communicated goal. These differences in flexibility, understanding, and adaptability existed in spite of the clients' lower level of concern for the auditor's outcome. While it may appear that auditors are unskilled negotiators, these data are also consistent with the view that auditors are hired to provide independent, accurate judgments on financial reporting matters, and consequently consider their accounting decisions to be less open for negotiation as compared to clients. Implications and directions for future research given these findings are discussed.

This study addresses certain properties of the analysts' forecasts adjusted by predictable error patterns and re-examines the association between subsequent abnormal securities returns and two earnings forecast-based measures (Elgers, Lo, and Pfeiffer, 2001; Frankel and Lee, 1998). The adjusted analysts' forecasts are found to be more accurate than the unadjusted analysts' forecasts, especially for firms with prior poor performance. Furthermore, the study shows that the adjusted analysts' forecasts are improved proxies for market expectations of earnings, compared to the unadjusted analysts' forecasts. Elgers, Lo and Pfeiffer (2001) document a profitable hedge portfolio strategy based on the price-scaled analysts' forecasts. This study shows that the price-scaled adjusted analysts' forecasts (the more accurate forecasts) generate descriptively smaller amounts of hedge portfolio returns, though the decrease in hedge portfolio returns is not statistically significant. The lack of significant change is due to the minor impact of the adjustment on the composition of hedge portfolios. On the other hand, the directional decrease in hedge portfolio returns may suggest that analysts aim to forecast value-relevant earnings rather than actual earnings, especially for the early-in-the-year forecasts. Frankel and Lee (1998) show that price-scaled implicit firm-values are reliable predictors of subsequent securities returns. The implicit firm values are generated by using analysts' forecasts as proxies for market expectations in a manner consistent with Ohlson's (1995) residual income model. The results show that the price-scaled implicit firm values generate very similar amounts of hedge portfolio returns after analysts' forecasts are adjusted. It is also because the adjustment of analysts' forecasts in this study is too minor to change the composition of hedge portfolios.

The PCAOB inspection reports for large audit firms are primarily anecdotal in nature, providing only a list of deficiencies found without any statistical context (e.g., the inspection sample size). This is problematic when trying to determine the extent of a firm’s audit weaknesses. However, simply adding statistical data to the reports, as currently provided in the PCAOB reports of small firms, may not solve the problem. Prior research suggests that statistical data are often ignored or underweighted when anecdotal data are present. This study investigates whether a bias for anecdotal data overwhelms the statistical data as currently presented in small firm reports, and whether any anecdotal bias can be overcome by possible decision aids. I first demonstrate that the anecdotal data presented in PCAOB reports can lead to incorrect perceptions of audit firms. I then find that the PCAOB’s practice of providing statistical context in small firm reports is ineffective; that is, users continue to focus on anecdotal data even in the presence of informative statistical data. Finally, I provide evidence to indicate that two easily implemented decision aids can successfully help incorporate statistical data into perceptions of audit firms, resulting in more informed audit engagement decisions.