A Call For Attention : External Stakeholder Influence on Executives Within Swedish Banks

Sammanfattning: In 2008, a financial crisis struck the world economy, causing a risk of a potential system-crash. In order to stabilize the financial system within Europe, European Banking Authority (EBA) presented new guidelines (GL44) as a way, among others, to increase the transparency among financial institutions. As a result of GL44, Swedish Financial Supervisory Authority (FSA) implemented new regulations, with minor adjustments and amendments. At present, the guidelines are weeks from being completely implemented, thus meaning that the financial industry is able to start seeing the changes from the regulations.The authors have chosen to conduct a study regarding how the banks have been affected from the external authority demands during the previous recession.The focus of the study has been on three of Sweden’s four large banks, which are considered systematically important, as well as one niche bank.The study showed that the work in board and top-management was affected by external demands from authorities. The attention on business development was disturbed during the recession since more focus was put on controlling factors such as compliance, risk management and internal audit as well as on board composition and board competence.