Background:Family-business is considered to be the most frequent and complex form of businessorganization around the world. However, recently there has been a large number ofcorporate scandals in such firms especially at the board level (e.g. Parmalat). Within theframework of two corporate governance models characterized by the Continental Europeanand the Anglo-Saxon model, boards of directors hold a central position. This positionbecomes of great importance when talking about public companies and more specifically inpublic family-controlled companies. The concentration of ownership is the maincharacteristic of the Continental European, which is the most workable form of corporategovernance for family-controlled business. Nevertheless, family-controlled companies actingunder the Anglo-Saxon model have also been able to operate successfully. Therefore, wewill investigate if there is a convergence of corporate governance in family-controlledcompanies across frontiers focusing mainly on boards’ structures and composition as well asownership, and the sub-committees.Purpose:The overall purpose of this thesis is to contribute to the understanding of CorporateGovernance in public Family-controlled firms which are in the Swedish and UnitedKingdom stock market. More specifically, investigate whether the boards’ structures andcomposition, as well as ownership and the existence of sub-committees show similarities ornot in Family-controlled firms acting within the framework of an Anglo-Saxon andContinental model of Corporate GovernanceMethod:A quantitative approach was used to fulfill the purpose of this thesis. Furthermore, the top10 family-controlled companies with highest market-capitalization have been selected fromboth countries to constitute our sample. The empirical material was gathered mainly fromthe annual reports of the companies but also by contacting the companies by email or fromarticles in online newspapers.Conclusion:This study found that in some aspects of corporate governance convergence exists while inothers it does not. Regarding board structures and composition, there is a convergence to“on...
