Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'European listed companies'

<p>In the ever so increasingly competitive business climate of the 21^st century, human resources are vital for corporate success. Employees need proper incentives to perform in goal-oriented manners. Incentive systems, especially Chief Executive Officer [CEO] remunerations, have been a popular topic since the 1990s, and this tendency has increased both during the 2002-2003 corporate scandal era, as well as the financial crisis which sparked in 2007. The recent tendency appears to lean towards companies cutting their executive bonuses as well as criticism and suspiciousness towards large bonus payments. While remuneration policies within the banking industry have been thoroughly debated and researched, another financial industry that is left largely untouched are the insurance companies. The focus of this research is therefore CEO remuneration in European insurance companies.</p><p>This descriptive study, of annual reports of stock-listed insurance companies, uses a purposive cluster sample to explore quantitative trends in CEO remunerations. In addition, a content analysis of five randomly selected companies out of the sample provides a deeper, complementary understanding of the justifications of the trends. The research questions are: <em>What trends on CEO remuneration can be found over the years 2005-2009 in annual reports of European insurance companies, concerning total remuneration, fixed salary and short-term bonus? What justifications do companies make for the remunerations</em><em> over the years 2005-2009</em><em>? </em></p><p>The quantitative part of the research inductively tests the assumption that CEO remuneration has decreased during the past few years 2008 and/ or 2009 due to the impact of the financial crisis. The content analysis part of the research deductively tests if agency theory concerns and issues concerning attraction and retention play a role in determining remuneration policies.<em></em></p><p>From this research, it is concluded that short-term variable pay is largely performance-based. Still, many other aspects serve as input factors when determining compensation levels. Based on the content analysis, it is revealed that interest alignment and attraction- and retention-issues are important determinants of remunerations. Subjective factors such as discretionary judgements also play a crucial role. The quantitative trends found in this study show that total remunerations have decreased markedly in 2008, and more vaguely in 2009. The financial crisis has had an impact on especially the short-term variable part of salaries, but also on base salary levels. Although not all companies that were investigated in the content analysis explicitly mention it in their annual reports, over the years 2005-2009, all of them become more concerned about remuneration policies and business risk factors. Over the investigated years, these companies also become more attentive to creating proactive and sophisticated value creating remuneration policies that are in line with international standards, in order to act legitimate towards stakeholders.</p>

<p><strong>Background: </strong>The increased globalization and trade over domestic borders within the European Union (EU) has lead to the implementation of new international accounting standards. This is necessary to create an effective capital market, where comparisons between companies located in different countries can be made, due to a more harmonized accounting. Obstacles to overcome when establish a more harmonized accounting in the EU is for example different accounting backgrounds and valuation methods.</p><p><strong>Purpose: </strong>The purpose of the thesis is to as far possible study whether the establishment of IAS 40 contributes to an increased harmonization and more comparable accounting of investment property for listed companies within the EU.</p><p><strong>Method: </strong>This thesis involves both a quantitative –and a qualitative research method. We have used primary data in forms of interviews, and secondary data in forms of annual reports, regulations, literature and articles in the thesis. Using both primary –and secondary data results in a higher reliability and validity.</p><p><strong>Frame of reference:</strong> There are two alternative valuations methods according to IAS 40, the cost –and the fair value model. The cost model means a valuation to historical cost minus depreciation. Valuation in compliance to the fair value model on the other hand means that the investment property shall be valuated to market value. When using the cost model a note of the fair value shall be included in the financial statement. A company has according to IAS 40 the possibility to choose between internal –or external valuation when estimating the fair value.</p><p><strong>Empirical results and analysis: </strong>Our empirical result is presented mainly through annual reports from listed investment property companies in Sweden, England and Germany. We found that the fair value model was used by all the analysed companies in Sweden and England in 2005, the year of the implementation of IAS 40 in the EU. By analysing the annul reports from the investment property companies we found indications that the fair value model also tends to become the generally excepted valuation model in Germany. Furthermore, our empirical result shows that a majority of the Swedish investment property companies regularly used internal valuation, but there is a pattern of external valuation as a complement to the internal valuation. In England and Germany all investment property companies used external valuation and there was no use of internal valuation even as a complement to the external valuation.</p><p><strong>Conclusions: </strong>Based on our empirical results we draw the conclusion that the accounting for listed investment property companies within the EU is more harmonized and comparable today than before the implementation of IAS 40 in 2005. However, IAS 40 gives the companies the possibility to decide weather to use the cost –or the fair value model and the use of external valuation is optional. This can be viewed as obstacles to achieve a total harmonization of the accounting within the EU for listed investment property companies. From our empirical findings we draw the conclusion that the fair value model tends to become the generally excepted valuation model within the EU. Also, we do not perceive the use of the cost model as a barrier to the harmonization process because the fair value still has to be left in a not in the financial statement. However, we believe that in order to achieve a more harmonized and more comparable accounting for listed investment property companies within in the EU a directive about a minimum of external valuation must be included in IAS 40. This in order to avoid companies to use only internal valuation of the properties as this may effect the result. <strong></strong></p><p><strong> </strong></p>

In the last decades there was an evolving theoretical and practical discussion about the implementation of corporate social responsibility (CSR), partially provoked due to the occurrence of incidents which were caused by negligently companies. Furthermore, there is a disagreement of financial outcomes of the implementation of CSR strategies in prior research. The thesis contributes to the limited established empirical research on the impact of social incidents on company’s CSR transparency and social performance of companies listed in European Union Member States. Furthermore, the thesis examines the impact of social performance on financial performance based on 308 observations in a time range of 2012 to 2014. The author finds no significant relationship between incidents and an improved CSR transparency or social performance for the overall sample at any conventional level. However, the author finds a positive significant relationship between social performance and financial performance, measured by the logarithm of Tobin’s q, which indicates that social performance has a positive impact on financial performance.

Mestrado em Contabilidade, Fiscalidade e Finanças Empresariais<br>O propósito deste estudo é analisar a relação entre o endividamento e a qualidade dos resultados nas empresas cotadas Europeias, visto que, estudos anteriores apresentam opiniões díspares relativamente à influência do endividamento na gestão de resultados. A amostra é composta por 1278 empresas cotadas de 13 países Europeus, sendo o período de análise de 2007 a 2016. Através desta análise, pretende-se descobrir se a influência do endividamento na gestão de resultados é negativa, positiva ou ambas, sugerindo uma relação não linear. Os resultados sugerem que a influência é positiva e, consequentemente, que a relação existente entre estas duas variáveis é linear. Os resultados propõem também que a gestão dos resultados é influenciada negativamente pela baixa rentabilidade e positivamente pela rendibilidade do ativo.<br>This study has the purpose of analyzing the relationship between debt financing and earnings management on European listed companies, since previous literature report mixed results about the influence of debt financing on earnings management. The sample is composed by 1278 listed companies from 13 European countries, between 2007 and 2016. Through this research it is tried to discover if the influence of debt financing on earnings management is negative, positive or both, suggesting a non-linear relationship. The results suggest that the influence of debt on earnings management is positive and that, the relationship between debt financing and earnings management is linear. Results also propose that earnings quality is negatively influenced by firm's low profitability and positively influenced by firm's return on assets.<br>info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion