The rise and decline of industrial foundations as controlling owners of Swedish listed firms: the role of tax incentives

Beginning in the interwar period, industrial foundations became a vehicle for corporate control of large listed firms in Sweden. In the 1990s they were replaced by wealthy individuals who either directly own controlling blocks or who own them through holding companies. We study potential explanations for this change and propose two tax-related candidates: shifts in the relative effective taxation across owner types and the dismantling of...