Aktiebolag (literally "share company" or "stock company") is the Swedish term for "limited company" or "corporation". When used in company names, it is abbreviated "AB" or "Ab" (roughly equivalent to the abbreviations Ltd and PLC). The governmental authority responsible for registration of limited companies in Sweden is called Bolagsverket (the Swedish Companies Registration Office).

In Sweden, the abbreviation is written in capital letters ("AB"), but in Finland it is written with a capital "A" and a small "b" ("Ab"). Some old companies still use an old way of writing the abbreviation, which is "A/B".

All aktiebolag are divided into two categories: private limited companies and public limited companies.

A public limited company (publikt aktiebolag) is legally denoted as "AB (publ.)" in Sweden or "Abp" in Finland. A Swedish public limited company must have a minimum share capital of 500,000 Swedish kronor^[1] and its shares can be offered to the general public on the stock market. The suffix "(publ.)" is sometimes omitted in texts of an informal nature, but according to the Swedish Companies Registration Office, "the name of a public limited company must be mentioned with the term (publ.) after the business name in the articles of association and elsewhere", unless it is clearly understood from the company’s business name that the company is a public limited company.^[1]

For a private limited company in Sweden (privat aktiebolag), the minimum share capital is 50,000 Swedish kronor. The company name of a private limited company may not contain the word 'publikt' (public) and the name of a public limited company may not contain the word 'privat' (private).^[1]

The main Swedish statutes regulating limited companies are The Companies Act (Aktiebolagslagen (ABL) 2005:551) and The Limited Companies Ordinance (Aktiebolagsförordningen 2005:559). The law provisions in ABL stipulate that parent companies and subsidiaries are separate legal persons and legal entities.^[2]

For more extensive information on rules of aktiebolag in Finland, see the article on osakeyhtiö (which is the corresponding term in the Finnish language).

The abbreviation AB is seen in company names such as IFS AB, Lavasoft AB, MySQL AB, Mojang AB, Scania AB and Saab (Svenska Aeroplan AB).

References[link]

External links[link]

• Swedish Companies Registration Office

This article about stock exchanges is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. v t e

This article relating to the law of Europe or of a European country is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. v t e