Special Examination - For Better or for Worse? A study on the minority shareholder protection measure special examination on Swedish companies.

Sammanfattning: We study firms subject to the minority shareholder protection measure special examination in Sweden. First, we investigate common firm-level characteristics for companies subject to this action. Second, we investigate the financial outcomes of completing special examination. Firms subject to this are younger, carry a larger intangible assets-ratio and pay out higher dividends. They also have poorer financial performance relative to their peers. Financial outcomes for firms completing special examination are ambiguous and this study does not provide significant results. However, our results are in general coherent with previous research and we conclude in that special examination is highly correlated with poor corporate governance. We also suggest that special examination is solely a source of information for minority shareholders, rather than a call for management improvement.