A review of the application of the concept of Shareholder Value Added (SVA) in financial decisions

Abstract

In today's competitive world, value and wealth creation for shareholders are among the most important goals of businesses. For the sake of achieving his goals, the investor needs some instruments in order to measure the potential value of each investment opportunity. It is clear that these instruments are not capable of predicting the exact future, they just provide some piece of information and advice that help the investor in the decisions he makes. Among these criteria, the most common types are Return on Investment (ROI) and Earnings per Share (EPS). Despite the numerous applications of these instruments, theoretically, they are not related with shareholders’ value or wealth creation. In recent years, the modern evaluation techniques based on economic theories such as Economic Value Added (EVA), Market Value Added (MVA), Refined Economic Value Added (REVA), Shareholder Value Added (SVA), Cash Value Added (CVA), and Adjusted Economic Value Added (AEVA) replace the accounting data-based criteria and have widely drawn the attentions. These criteria follow the performance assessment with regard to the changes in the value and alongside maximizing the long-term shareholder returns. In this paper, one of the most important criteria; i.e. Shareholder Value Added (SVA), is investigated from several viewpoints.