Abstract
This chapter offers insights into the governance of Swedish state-owned enterprises performed by civil servants in cooperation with the minister and state secretary in the Ministry of Enterprise and Innovation. The authors take particular interest in the practices and thinking of the few but powerful civil servants who work with board appointment. A closer look into the daily practices shows us that negotiating and aligning the political and the commercial logics at stake is described as key to the board appointment. These processes are, in turn, based on conditioned trust between civil servants and politicians.