Fyra sätt att äga ett handelshus - Ägarstrukturens effekter med avseende på risk och utdelning

Abstract

Even though companies can work with similar activities within the same industry, their ownership structures can vary widely. The owners can be independent individuals, employees, investment companies, families who have been in control through several generations and even nonprofit foundations. If and how each ownership structure has an effect on the company is something that has been covered in many publications throughout history. Especially with regards to the different agency problems that might arise with each ownership structure. However, something that is not widely covered in past research is Swedish trading houses and their specific activities. It is a group of companies that has been very present throughout the history of Swedish international trade as well as important players in the harbor city of Gothenburg. The purpose of this study is therefore to examine the impact of different ownership structures in four Swedish trading houses, especially with regard to their operational and strategic risk management as well as their dividend policy. This is because of the foundation of the study is based on agency theory and its relationship to ownership structure, where operational and strategic risk management and dividend policy can be seen as indicators of ownership preferences. Based on the research questions, an empirical survey is done through qualitative interviews with four management representatives from four different trading houses. One company is owned by its employees, one is family owned, one is owned by a foundation and the final one is partially owned by a family and partially by its employees. The survey will show that the operational risk management only differs marginally between the surveyed actors. This is because of the challenges they all meet in their business activities, which is something they all have to handle in similar ways. However, strategic risk is managed differently between the companies, where the employee owned actors to a larger extent have diversified their risks within the trading business. This can be explained by their concentration of wealth to the company as well as that the owners are more naturally active in day to day business and therefore, more easily can identify new business opportunities and possible risks. The study also finds that requirements on equity ratio from banks to a large extent prevents these companies to purse dividends. However, dividend is often practiced by the partially family owned company as well as the foundation owned company due to the foundation requirements.