About the Foundations

That year, the board of Handelsbanken decided to establish a foundation for research in the social sciences, contributing five million SEK. The proposal came from Tore Browaldh, who was then the bank’s CEO.

More than 60 years later, the foundation’s assets have grown to SEK 13 billion (as of the turn of the year 2024/2025), and the total disbursements to research has reached SEK 3,9 billion.

The funds included in Handelsbanken’s foundations are the Jan Wallander and Tom Hedelius Foundation, and the Tore Browaldh Foundation.

The foundations are governed by a board, currently consisting of three members.

It is a research committee – made up of ten researchers along with the board – that reviews applications and decides who will receive grants. The committee members are professors in economics, business administration, and economic history from various universities.

Thus, it is the committee, and not the shared board of the foundations, that determines which researchers and institutions will receive funding.

The board’s responsibility is to manage the foundations’ assets on the Swedish stock market and to decide what portion of the return – at least 80 percent – will be made available to the research committee each year. The board also appoints new members to the research committee when needed.

It is difficult to quantify the foundations’ impact on socio-economic research in Sweden. However, the scientific secretary (Lars Engwall) has made an attempt. He found that during the period 2003–2009, over half – 53 percent – of all funding for socio-economic research from foundations and research councils came from these foundations. Since then, grant levels have increased significantly, meaning their importance has likely grown. At any given time, approximately 1,200 researchers are estimated to receive some form of funding from the foundations.