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Case Study

Skandia: ''Castles built on sand''

By Stewart Hamilton and Anna Lindblom

33 pages

February 2005

Reference: IMD-1-0224

In the end of the 1990s Skandia transformed itself from a “dull” traditional insurance company to an attractive fund management company. Sailing on the stock market boom fuelled by the Internet, Skandia’s share price reached a high of SKr 231 in June 2000. Three years later, the share price had plummeted 93% to SKr 16. The story that unfolds on two continents is about the amazing stock price roller coaster; about jealousy and boardroom disputes, executive perks, dubious finance and accounting methods, and an investment model heavily weighted towards IT stocks. Skandia crashed and burned, but survived. Nevertheless, the story would later be called the biggest scandal in Swedish industrial history.

Keywords

Insurance, Corporate Governance, Executive Remuneration, Accounting, Board of Directors

Settings

1999-2003

Type

Published Sources

Available Languages

English

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