Background: Family-business is considered to be the most frequent and complex form of business organization around the world. However, recently there has been a large number of corporate scandals in such firms especially at the board level (e.g. Parmalat). Within the framework of two corporate governance models characterized by the Continental European and the Anglo-Saxon model, boards of directors hold a central position. This position becomes of great importance when talking about public companies and more specifically in public family-controlled companies. The concentration of ownership is the main characteristic of the Continental European, which is the most workable form of corporate governance for family-controlled business. Nevertheless, family-controlled companies acting under the Anglo-Saxon model have also been able to operate successfully. Therefore, we will investigate if there is a convergence of corporate governance in family-controlled companies across frontiers focusing mainly on boards’ structures and composition as well as ownership, and the sub-committees. Purpose: The overall purpose of this thesis is to contribute to the understanding of Corporate Governance in public Family-controlled firms which are in the Swedish and United Kingdom stock market. More specifically, investigate whether the boards’ structures and composition, as well as ownership and the existence of sub-committees show similarities or not in Family-controlled firms acting within the framework of an Anglo-Saxon and Continental model of Corporate Governance Method: A quantitative approach was used to fulfill the purpose of this thesis. Furthermore, the top 10 family-controlled companies with highest market-capitalization have been selected from both countries to constitute our sample. The empirical material was gathered mainly from the annual reports of the companies but also by contacting the companies by email or from articles in online newspapers. Conclusion: This study found that in some aspects of corporate governance convergence exists while in others it does not. Regarding board structures and composition, there is a convergence to “one tier board” and the presence of family members and employee representation in boards. On the other hand, when it comes to the sizes of the boards and number of independent directors in the boards we argue that convergence is not present.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:hj-1365 |
| Date | January 2008 |
| Creators | Mártires, Miguel Ángel, Sawicki, Kamil |
| Publisher | Internationella Handelshögskolan, Högskolan i Jönköping, IHH, Företagsekonomi, Internationella Handelshögskolan, Högskolan i Jönköping, IHH, Företagsekonomi |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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