Corporate Governance

Abstract

Concepts like corporate governance have been developed, due to the needs of the owners to supervise the management and influence the directions of the acquired companies. We will for the purpose of this thesis, look upon corporate governance as a means for the investors/owners to exercise influence over, and supervise the acquired company, and thereby affecting the return on investment. If corporate governance is practised, an active ownership is a prerequisite. The objective of this study has been to explore and analyse how investing companies look upon the concept of active ownership, how this is exercised in practice, and how this could benefit both one's own and the acquired company. In order to answer these questions we conducted an explorative and descriptive study, namely a study of a number of selected companies' annual reports, in combination with two personal interviews. The study indicates that it is hard to find a distinct definition of what active ownership consists of, though it seems to demand actions concerning the management of the acquired company. This is mainly accomplished through board participation. The investing companies, active on the risk capital market, consider the most important aim for active ownership to be profit maximisation. The same companies consider the access to their network of knowledge to be the main contribution to the acquired company.