It is widely accepted that the primary objective or goal of a firm is to maximise the shareholders' equity. While there may be legitimate differences of opinion as to whether this is the sole motivation of a firm's management, it should without a doubt be a dominant variable in management's...

The development and growth of the listed firm during the past decades caused an ever widening and more complex gap between ownership and management. Agency theory addresses this relationship between the owners (shareholders) and the custodians of their wealth, the management of the firm. If...