This paper analyses the level of small shareholder (SS) participation in the Annual General Meeting (AGM), assessing how this reflects upon the corporate governance of listed entities. It focuses on SS attendance, voting and proposals (excluding those of institutional and majority shareholders), improving SS participation and the significance of such AGM proceedings to listed company corporate governance. Empirical mixed methodology research is carried out in a Maltese listed company (LC) setting by means of semi-structured interviews with seventeen LC secretaries, five stockbrokers, an online questionnaire responded by fifty-four shareholders in different LCs, as well as the analysis of company notices and documentation relating to the AGM. Results indicate that SS participation is weak. Attendance is poor, and is often spurred both by legitimate factors such as information on current financial performance and by questionable ones such as refreshments served and venue. Shareholders seem uncomfortable in asking management formal questions and even in voting by show of hands, and therefore opt for informal interaction with management and for  voting by poll, the latter often rendering attendance fruitless and even unnecessary by permitting proxies. As for proposals, they could induce management’s later action despite seldom, if ever, being approved, but their submission is rare and mostly frivolous, commonly hampered by a lack of financial knowledge. The study concludes that the current level of SS participation does not render the AGM a tool reflecting good corporate governance, as it does not keep in balance the interests of this shareholder with those of other stakeholders. For the sake of better direction and control, and, in particular, for more transparency and accountability, the AGM has to be less stage-managed, as well as more interactive and engaging towards such shareholder. This calls for increased management commitment, particularly towards more investoreducation and guidance.

In this paper we investigate the short term abnormal return to the bidding firm’s shareholders in takeover transactions in Finland during the time period from January 2000 to December 2013. Specific features of the market for corporate acquisitions in Finland are that almost all of the transactions are friendly acquisitions and usually aim for 100 % of the target company. We estimate the abnormal return around 314 individual takeover announcements and investigate determinants of the abnormal returns. Our results show that the takeover announcement on average yields a positive abnormal return to the bidding firm’s shareholders, thus, support the value creating hypothesis. The announcement effect on the announcement day is1.4 % and statistically significant. Both pre-event and post-event abnormal returns are statistically insignificant, although there is sign of a negative revaluation in the post-event period. Among the takeover characteristics, we document a significant impact on the bidder’s abnormal return on the announcement day for small deals yielding a higher abnormal return, but a positive relationship between the announcement effect and the relative size of the deal, cross-border deals giving a smaller abnormal return, and indication of diversification deals giving a higher abnormal return to the bidder’s shareholders.

Consequences of the crime influence the life of the whole society, it permeates to all areas of social life, as well as it penetrates into the lives of ordinary citizens of Slovakia. One of the most significant crimes is the economic crime. The relevance and the seriousness of the economic crime are expressed by its immediate threat of economic life and of the prosperity of society. The relevance of this issue is underlined by the fact that in the recent years there is an increase of new and more dangerous forms of crime.

The aim of this paper is to examine the overall number of economic crime and the damages caused by these criminal activities in Slovakia during the last ten years. The emphasis will be put on the analysis of the number of business entities influenced by the economic crime, on the analysis of economic crime by the sectors of national economy and by the forms of economic crime in Slovakia. We will analyse the most common ways of committing tax frauds and accounting frauds, that distorts the business environment and it represents also a significant threat to the public finances. The complex accounting and tax issues enable the defrauders to commit accounting frauds and tax frauds; this is because of the deficiencies in the legislation, inefficient control processes and complexity of management. After that we analyse the number of Slovak companies with the owner from a tax haven. Within the analysis of secondary data in this paper appropriate mathematical and statistical methods will be used. Based on the evaluation of the results of research, conclusions and suggestions will be drawn.

Using the Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) approach to cointegration, an error correction model (ECM) is estimated for real private domestic consumption in Lesotho. Lesotho is one of a number of countries with low gross domestic product (GDP) per capita, that are landlocked and of which the national currency is pegged to that of a highly dominant trading partner. Analysis of consumption pattern in such countries is scant in the literature. This paper finds evidence of a long-run relationship between private consumption, income, interest rates, and inflation. The empirical findings suggest that higher income is associated with higher private consumption, higher inflation reduces private consumption and that higher interest rates reduce private consumption, implying that the substitution effect outweighs the income effect in Lesotho in the long term. Although the model is not designed to evaluate consumption theories, the estimated parameters to some extent support the absolute income hypothesis (AIH), relative income hypothesis (RIH), life-cycle hypothesis (LCH) and permanent income hypothesis (PIH).

Fraud is global social problem and they occur in all activities. The term fraud implies corruption, misappropriation of assets and fraudulent financial reporting. People that commit fraud are inside and outside of organisation. Factors that affect fraud doing are: motive, opportunity, ability and justification. In our region, it can be said that fraud is not individual problem but it’s a case of systematic fraud, especially in public sector by creating monopoly of private over public sector. Costs related to fraud will be difficult to objectively assess. Everyone is sensitive to health care related frauds, from patients and doctors to whole society. For battle against fraud requires political will, effective legislative framework and anti-fraud strategy. Every strategy has to begin with prevention process. Paper presents model of fraud prevention process. Model is based on increasing awareness of all participants about the importance of battle against the fraud, accepting anti-fraud policies and zero fraud toleration, establishing channels for reporting fraud, as well as defining responsibilities of internal audit in evaluation of internal controls, fraud risk assessment, corporate governance and providing recommendations for process improvement.

This paper explores the forecasting of EUR/CHF exchange rate volatility in short term period in Albanian market, being that Euro is the mostly used currency in financial and commercial transactions and furthermore together with Swiss franc are considered as safe currencies with a probabilistic volatility distribution statistically interesting. Precisely the latter, represents a continuous concern for the economic agents dealing with the above mentioned exchange risk, hence the measurement of its volatility helps them in the assessment and maintenance of capital needed for coverage purposes almost referring to trade balance trend toward Euro-Area and not as well as to the Eurobond issued. Under these circumstances, the financial time series dynamic models such as ARMA (1;1), ARCH (1) and GARCH (1;1) are used to estimate the EUR/CHF exchange rate volatility in short term period. The last one, which at 95% confidence level displays satisfactory statistical parameters in confront of the others in terms of normal residuals distribution is also used to forecast EUR/CHF exchange rate during 2015 in correspondence of moving average method based on latest 252 exchange rate values. In statistical terms the comparison of EUR/CHF exchange rate forecasted data through GARCH (1;1) model with the current ones demonstrated a good robustness of the latter at the confidence level taken into consideration. Therefore, the research in question suggests to the economic agents dealing with these kinds of transactions the implementation of GARCH models for the estimation and forecasting of EUR/CHF exchange rate volatility in the short term period, necessary for risk management purposes.

High stressors can be experienced by employees, both by civil servants and private sector employees. This could have an impact on the positive and negative behaviors of employees and could eventually affect employee performance. The purpose of this study is to examine and analyze the effect of stressors on deviant behavior (negative and positive) and work performance of civil servants in Bantul, Yogyakarta, Indonesia. This research is a survey research using questionnaires given in private to civil servants as respondents, with a purposive sampling technique. Research results concluded that; (1) stressor of individual and task demands has a significant positive effect on negative behavior, (2) stressor of role demand has no significant effect on negative behavior, (3) stressor of individual demand has a significant negative effect on positive behavior, (5) stressor of task demand has no significant effect on positive behavior, (6) stressor of role demand has no significant effect on positive behavior, (7) negative attitudes have a significant negative effect on employee performance, and(8) positive behaviors have a significant positive effect on employee performance.

In this study, the two cities, Sheffield in the UK and Karabük in Turkey, which are famous for iron and steel producing, were analyzed through their historical background to focus on the differences and similarities from an urban perspective. Both the rise in the production of iron and steel in the 18th century through Industrial Revolution and the innovations made Sheffield popular throughout the world. Karabük is called “The Republic City” in Turkey because the first iron and steel works were built in Karabük in 1937 shortly after the proclamation of Republic of Turkey. The museums were visited and the local studies and academic papers were sorted out to see the effects of sudden changes which the heavy industry caused in the cities and it’s concluded that the industrial, urban and social experiences of Sheffield may be a guide for Karabük.