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.

The objective of my thesis was to provide a comprehensive survey on ownership as a legal institute and one of man's important values. It should be presented in the historical context and its development should be drawn up both over the course of several centuries and through various communities of people, whether under a totalitarian regime or free. My thesis consists of 4 major parts. Part 1 is dedicated to Roman law and includes chapters on the subject of ownership, acquisition of property, protection of ownership and limitations of ownership. Part 2 describes the development of ownership in our country. Specifically it analyses the General Civic Code - ABGB, Civic Code - 141/1950 Coll. and Civic Code - 40/1964 Coll. My objective was also to give at least a partial insight into the legal regulations regarding ownership in other states. Given the fact that this is an extensive matter, it appeared to be most effective to do a survey of ownership at the constitutional level in EU countries, namely Spain, Germany, Luxembourg, France, Greece, Portugal, Lithuania and Hungary, see Part 3 hereof. I assumed a more detailed treatment of ownership at the constitutional level would be applied in western countries. However, this hypothesis turned out to be wrong at least in the cases of Spain and Luxembourg....

published_or_final_version / Housing Management / Master / Master of Housing Management

This study presents a detailed and comprehensive overview of the context and domination of the "American Dream House" in the United States of the past one hundred years. Additionally, It investigates the present day status and effects of this dependence. This inquiry uses an alternative method of investigation that involves the use of the popular media and extensive research of the past presentation of the "American Dream House" in it. It also involves research into the effects of promotional campaigns on the public perception of the "American Dream House." The research suggests that there exists a crisis in this country in the form of a severe attachment to the mythological and historical nature of this limited housing form. The investigation further suggests that the characteristics and elements of the "American Dream House" have not substantially changed in the past fifty years. This severe attachment to the characteristics of the past both threatens and confines a search and pursuit for a cure to this country's housing problems of the late 20th and early 2131 century. / Department of Architecture

Recent failure of such companies as Enron, Worldcom and Parmala showed that there are internal reasons contributing to company’s financial distress. Financial distress is a condition when a company fails to meet its debt obligations. Board of directors is liable for long-term decisions and their ineffective work in monitoring and controlling management can influence companies’ performance. With that in mind, in this degree project, we would like to answer the following research question: “What is the relationship between characteristics of Board and probability of financial distress, measured by Altman’s Z-score models in Sweden and Denmark?”   The epistemological and ontological choices for our study were positivism and objectivism with deductive approach. We have calculated Z-scores of Swedish and Danish companies in order to detect distressed and healthy companies. Further on, the information about board composition in each company was collected; mainly we were interested in board independence, board size, board ownership, COB ownership, CEO duality and employee representatives.   In order to examine if there is a relationship between board composition and financial distress, we have done Multiple and Binary Regression analyses. Based on the results we can state that board independence, board ownership and employee representatives and market capitalization (control variable) have significant relationship with probability of financial distress. Our study is interesting since we have looked at employee representatives, as a board characterectic that is specific for Nordic countries and that was not studied before. In addition, we have found that there is no CEO duality in Sweden and Denmark, since all companies in our sample followed the Companies’ Acts. COB ownership, the additional variable we wanted to test and board size have shown no significant relationship.

Tidigare finanskriser har resulterat i ett större fokus på bankers risktagande. Kriserna har påvisat hur bankers kris kan få förödande effekt på den globala marknaden vilket har föranlett olika konsekvenser (bland annat i form av nya regelverk) för att hantera bankers tendens mot ett för högt risktagande. Bankers inställning till risktagande kan förklaras utifrån dess ägarstruktur där ägarna kan ha olika riskpreferenser.   Forskningsstudier har påvisat att ett samband existerar mellan ägarkoncentration och bankers risk, dock utan någon konsensus om sambandets utseende. Syftet med studien är att undersöka hur ägarstruktur påverkar bankers konkursrisk, där banker inom EU-länder har undersökts. Vidare har karaktären på bankernas största aktieägare tagits i beaktning för att se om sambandet mellan ägarkoncentration och risk skiljer sig beroende på vilka ägare bankerna utgörs av. Därtill har sex hypoteser formulerats som syftar till att undersöka relationen mellan ägarstruktur, agentkostnader och konkursrisk utifrån agentteorin och teorier om bolagsstyrning. För studiens undersökning har  en kvantitativ metod använts tillsammans med en deduktiv ansats.   Undersökningen visar, likt andra studier, att det existerar ett samband mellan ägarstruktur och bankers risk. Mer specifikt visar vår studie att sambandet ser olika ut för olika ägartyper. För vissa ägartyper har vi identifierat ett positivt samband mellan ägarkoncentrationen och bankers konkursrisk medan för andra ägartyper har vi istället identifierat ett negativt samband. Avslutningsvis visar studien att agentkostnader föreligger i större grad när aktieägarna har mindre kontroll över ledningen. / Previous financial crises have resulted in a greater focus on bank’s risk taking. The crises have shown how the bank’s instability may create a devastating effect on the global market, which has given rise to several studies focus on bank’s risk. Bank’s attitude towards risk taking can be explained by its ownership structure where the owners may have different risk preferences.   Research studies have found a relationship between the concentration of ownership and bank risk, but without any consensus on the sign of the relationship. The purpose of this study is to investigate how ownership concentration affects bank’s default risk. The study has been performed on banks within the EU countries. Furthermore, the nature of the bank’s largest shareholders has been taken into consideration to distinguish whether they have an impact on the relationship between ownership concentration and risk. In addition, six hypotheses were formulated which aim to investigate the relationship between ownership concentration, agency costs and the default risk, based on the agency theory and theories on corporate governance. For this study’s survey a quantitative method has been used in conjunction with a deductive approach.   Our findings show that there exists a relationship between ownership concentration and bank risk. More specifically, our study shows that the relationship is different depending on the nature of the owner. For some types of owners, we have identified a positive relationship between ownership concentration and bank’s default risk, while for other types of owners we have instead identified a negative relationship. Finally, this study shows that agency costs are greater when shareholders perform a lower degree of monitoring of the management.

This work collected four years of financial data from an employee-owned firm and a traditionally-owned firm from the same industry. The data were then organized to provide measures of three dimensions of corporate performance: (1) employee turnover, (2) productivity, and (3) profitability. Based upon a review of the literature, employee stock ownership plans (ESOP) are reported to enhance corporate performance after their adoption. Additionally, ESOPs are purported to perform better than traditionally-owned companies. This dissertation developed hypotheses to ascertain whether or not the particular ESOP used in this study conformed to these expectations. The first set of three hypotheses was tested using multiple regression techniques to determine if the ESOP experienced a reduction in turnover, an improvement in productivity, and an increase in profitability following its conversion to employee-ownership. The results of the regressions found that there was no incremental significance. There was no improvement noted in the performance of the ESOP firm. Another component of this investigation was to determine whether improvements in corporate performance were temporary or permanent phenomena. This portion of the research was rendered superfluous when no improvements were available for analysis. The final question that was examined was whether the ESOP would demonstrate better performance than a traditionally-owned control firm during the post-intrusion period. There was no significant difference discovered in productivity and profitability. A marked difference was identified in terms of turnover. However, it was the traditionally-owned firm which performed better than the employee-owned firm—the opposite of what was predicted. These findings, although interesting, had to be evaluated as inconclusive because of innate differences between the treatment and control firms. The variance between the two companies may be attributed to such factors as company size and marked differences in their respective labor markets. The ESOP used in this study did not demonstrate any of the changes in performance that had been predicted.

Protection of environment and ownership The diploma thesis deals with relationship between protection of environment and ownership in legal system of Czech Republic. The thesis is based on complex approach to this matter and tries to cover all aspects of this relationship. Because typical for the relationship between protection of environment and ownership is a mutual collision, the thesis focuses on expressions of the collision in Czech legislation, among them various types of restrictions of the ownership in favour of protection of environment prevail. The diploma thesis analyses restrictions of ownership in the area of protection of wood, nature and landscape, agricultural land and water. In relation to the restrictions of ownership the diploma thesis deals with compensations for these restrictions. At the same time the diploma thesis introduces the ownership as a legal institute that can help to the protection of environment in many ways. Key words: protection of environment, ownership, restrictions of ownership, public interest, compensations 126 2

No description available.

Vorherrschende Meinungsmacht ist das in wenigen Händen liegende Potential, auf die Meinungsbildung einzuwirken. Sie behindert die Gewährleistung eines vielfältigen Rundfunkangebotes, das im Interesse der freien Meinungsbildung steht. Sie kann entstehen, wenn von Anfang an nur wenige Anbieter auf dem Markt sind oder bei anfänglicher Vielfalt kleinere Anbieter ausscheiden, die restlichen zusammenschmelzen oder ein Veranstalter mehrere Programme ausstrahlt. Doch auch die Einflußnahme eines Unternehmens auf verschiedenen Märkten oder die Bildung eines Informationsmonopols können zu vorherrschender Meinungsmacht führen. Daher stellt der Rundfunkstaatsvertrag Antikonzentrationsregelungen auf. Deren Ziel ist es, freie Meinungsbildung durch eine Vielfalt von Programmangeboten zu gewährleisten. Vermutet wird eine Gefährdung der Vielfalt im Fernsehen, wenn ein Veranstalter mehr als 30 % der Zuschaueranteile auf sich vereinigt. Diese Regelung gestattet eine recht hohe Konzentration von Rundfunkveranstaltern, die gleichwohl nicht verfassungswidrig ist. Zu verhindern ist aber, daß starke Unternehmen die vor- und nachgelagerten Märkte und die anderer Medien derart kontrollieren, daß Neueinsteigern der Zugang dazu verwehrt oder unverhältnismäßig erschwert wird. Das auf Zuschauermarktanteilen basierende Modell muß so ergänzt werden, daß die Cross-ownership umfassend berücksichtigt wird. Dies kann nur mit einer methodenpluralistischen Vorgehensweise bei der Messung des Einflusses erreicht werden. Mit dem Zuschauermarktanteilsmodell wurde ein neues Verfahrensrecht eingeführt. Vergleichbar dem Recht der Wirtschaftsaufsicht wurde ein System aus Überwachungsmitteln, Eingriffsmitteln und Sanktionen geschaffen, das die Unternehmen stärker zur Mitwirkung verpflichtet. Die Aufklärung konzentrationsrechtlicher Sachverhalte dient dem Schutz der freien Meinungsbildung und kann daher mit einigen Ausnahmen als Umsetzung der Anforderungen des Bundesverfassungsgerichts an den Grundrechtsschutz durch Verfahren aus dem Rundfunkgebührenurteil verstanden werden. / A multifarious broadcasting sypply is an essential requirement/ prerequisite for a free shaping of public opinion in a democracy. Predominance on the opinion market endangers or hinders this opinion-forming. Therefore it has to be avoided by looking first of the mechanism dominance can be developed. It occurs by acting of only a few provider on this market or the impeding of the access of new companies to the relevant market. Further on by merging of the big players or the concentration of several programs in the hands of one supplier dominance can arise. The instrument that states rules of media ownership to guarantee pluralism and diversity in the opinien market is the German Interstate Treaty of Broadcasting (Rundfunkstaatsvertrag). Hereafter a dominant position of a company is assumed by holding more than 30% of the recipients. Holding this high figure in one hand is not unconstitutional. Nevertheless this high market share must not erase competition on the opinion market? To identify an abuse of dominant positions you have to look at the behavior of the respective company, whether it is building up control over the adjacent markets and impeding of competing companies to enter the respective markets. This can only be done by looking at possible cross-ownership of the involved companies through a multi-tasking measuring system. A new procedure was introduced that is comparable to the general competition-rules. It consists of supervision, intervention and sanctions to bring the companies to stick to the rules. The thoroughly and strict enforcement of anticoncentration serves to shelter and enforce the free shaping of public opinion and meets -a few exceptions aside- all requirements given by the Federal Constitutional Court.