This essay examines the expected impact of the statury audit exemption in Sweden from anauditor perspective and any conscious changes made on the accounting firms to meet the abolition.The theoretical framework is divided into three parts where the first deals with the concept of audit, who the stakeholders are to revised information, the auditor's function from an agent and positive accountingtheoretical perspective and the expectation gap of what an auditor cando and what the client expect audit to be. The second part deals with the audit exemptions and effects in Denmark and England. The last section addresses the current debate, studies and statements by FAR SRS, small businesses, banks and the tax authority.The essay is essentially inductive with a phenomenological operator perspective. The thesis has a qualitative approach with four respondents who are authorized or approved as an auditor with extensive experience, active on four different accounting firms. The questionnaire is divided into two parts where the first part consists of a number of very open questions and the other part of more structured questions in order to obtain comprehensive answers.The survey shows that a number of new services, certifications and authentication degrees are to be expected in Sweden aswell.

This study aims to examine how performance management is compatible with the operations at Sida, Sweden?s International Development Cooperation Agency, by performing interviews with representatives from Sida. The public sector is facing increased demands on accounting, which has emerged as an institutionalized social norm in society. The nature of Sida?s operations, however, proves to be highly complex, rendering results based management difficult to implement.

Traditionellt sätt har det varit svårt för forskare att dokumentera förekomsten ochomfattningen av manipulering av redovisningsmått. Big Bath Accounting är ett fenomen sominnebär att tveksamma redovisningsmetoder tillämpas i syfte att förvränga företagets verkligasituation, vilket ofta sker i samband med VD-byte och när företag redovisar ett för periodennegativt resultat. Intresset för ämnesvalet väcktes utifrån en tidigare studie om Big BathAccounting, som påvisade statistiska samband mellan nedskrivning av goodwill vid VD-byterespektive negativt resultat. I denna studie är syftet att utreda om statistiska sambandföreligger mellan företagets avsättningar vid VD-byte och negativt resultat enligt teorin BigBath Accounting. I studien undersöks inte alla avsättningar, utan endastomstruktureringsutgifter och övriga avsättningar, då de är svåra att kontrollera och utrymmekan finnas för kreativ tolkning.

AbstractTitle: The Swedish real estate companies choices of valuation within investment properties and its further effects on the qualitative characteristics of accounting.-A study of the Swedish real estate companies listed and non - listed on the stock market, after the application of the international rule board.Background and Problem: From January 2005, all companies, listed on a stock market within the European Union, are required to prepare their consolidated accounts using common set of International Accounting Standards, IAS/IFRS. In Sweden, this opportunity has also been given to non-listed companies, to voluntary implement these rules in their consolidated accounts. One difference between Swedish accounting rules and contemporary International rules, deals with the accounting treatment of investment properties, which foremost affects the real estate market?s accounts. In contrast to the Swedish Financial Accounting Standards Council?s recommendation RR 24, the new standard, IAS 40, permits a choice between different accounting alternatives.

Background for the research problems: Small companies are very important for the economic stability and development, something which the economic crises in recent years have underlined. Therefore it?s important to minimize administrative costs for smaller companies and also in other ways facilitate their further development. For these reasons accounting has been simplified and auditing abolished for smaller companies in many countries. In Sweden auditing for small companies was abolished nearly three years ago.

Since year 2005 the accounting has changed for public companies because of the new international standards, IFRS. IFRS 3 provides a single international accounting treatment for acquisitions and has broadened the definition of intangible assets. By IFRS 3 goodwill is defined as the excess of the cost of acquisition and is separated from intangible assets. Now goodwill must be annually tested by an impairment test. There are many valuation issues to considerate when it comes to deciding the value of goodwill.

Background for the research problems: Small companies are very important for the economic stability and development, something which the economic crises in recent years have underlined. Therefore it?s important to minimize administrative costs for smaller companies and also in other ways facilitate their further development. For these reasons accounting has been simplified and auditing abolished for smaller companies in many countries. In Sweden auditing for small companies was abolished nearly three years ago.

The purpose of this thesis is to investigate the status of Swedish real estate companies in terms of financial health and risk of financial distress. The background is the ongoing financial crisis, which partly can be derived from the American real estate sector. Publicly available Accounting information from 16 listed real estate companies has been analyzed for a period of one year using financial ratios covering both the operational and financial activities. We find that the deceleration in the economy and in the real estate sector have forced the real estate companies to make large write downs, in line with the relatively new accounting rules, IFRS. Write downs are likely to reoccur during the following periods and real estate companies will therefore probably be forced to continue to show negative results.

Background: In 2001 the European Commission presented legislation to require use of IASB standards named IAS/IFRS for all listed parent companies within the EU no later than 2005, to improve an internal market for financial services within the EU. This harmonisation of the accounting regulations answers to the social development of today with land-frontiers easier to cross, increased demands on an open financial market and the companies searching for risk capital outside the boundaries of the own country. International comparisons within accounting have consequently become more of current interest and necessary. When the requirement to use the IASB standards only is intended for the group accounting the remaining question is according to which regulations the parent companies will set up their annual financial reports. In Statens Offentliga Utredningar 2003:71(Swedish Government Official Reports) the parent companies are suggested to be given an opportunity to apply IAS/IFRS also in the annual financial report.

Accounting firms operate in environments with high competition for graduates and students today expect employers to be present on Facebook and the like. We aim to describe whether two major accounting firms use social media in their graduate recruitment. We chose to do case studies of Grant Thornton and Ernst & Young and how they use social media channels aimed towards graduates. Through a through study of how the two companies communicated through various social media, we concluded that Grant Thornton was significantly better than their larger competitor at social media use. Both companies use Facebook as their main communication channel.

Purpose: The purpose with this empirical study is to investigate how many companies have chosen to apply the K2 framework and see why the remaining companies have chosen not to.Methodology: A choice of a quantitative approach has been applied to collect information and create a foundation for the problem. Furthermore a qualitative approach has been selected to cover the remains.Theoretical perspective: This section contains a presentation of the agency theory, the institutional theory, the k-project and a comparison of K2 and the existing regulation.Results: Three out of 143 companies applies BFNAR 2008:1. 13 out of 143 companies use self-generated intangible fixed assets. Out of 29 contacted companies only three know about K2. The 29 companies are from various lines of business within an area.Conclusion: The conclusion of our research is that the majority of the companies did not reject to use the K2 regulations.

There is an increased pressure for firms to provide the financial market with additional information. Such disclosure is attached with different kinds of costs. In spite of these costs, and in spite of increased mandatory disclosures, firms choose to voluntary disclosure financial information to analysts and others. This indicates that firms also benefit from providing additional information. The subjects of this study is 431 annual reports from firms listed at the Stockholm Stock Exchange for 2002 and 2005 and the objective is to survey factors that can explain variations in firms? voluntary disclosure.

The association between disclosure level and asymmetric information is a matter of importance andconsiderable interest to the financial reporting community. The theory in this area suggests that acommitment by a firm to increased levels of disclosure should lower the information asymmetry thuslowering the cost of equity. This theory may be compelling, but so far the empirical results have beenambiguous. Due to increased globalization the demand for high quality accounting standards has risen. In2005 The International Accounting Standard Board launched the standard named IFRS 3.

Previous research has, by studying large listed firms, identified cost reductions and knowledge transference as the primary reasons for outsourcing.  Previous research has also indicated that Business Process Outsourcing is likely to increase in popularity and experience high annual growth going forward. This study aims to explore why mid-sized and large firms decide to in Jämtlands län, fully or partly, outsource their finance/accounting activities. Theories regarding transaction cost economics and resource based view composes the foundation of this study and the information used has been gathered through the use of semi-structured interviews.  The results shows, like the chosen theories and previous research indicates, that the outsourcing decision is primary based on expected cost reductions.

The purpose of this essay is to investigate if the companies listed on Nasdaq/OMX Stockholm Large Cap use the earnings management phenomenon Big Bath Accounting to a greater extent when a change of management (CEO) is made.Management tends to use earnings management when there is a bonus plan linked to the result of the company. To gain maximum bonus the management will try to manipulate the result in a way that in a long term maximize their utility. Through the earnings management technique Big Bath the management is given the possibility to take one large cost as a one-time expend, even though the cost is supposed to run over several financial years. This, of course, within the legal framework. A big bath may occur when there is an impairment of goodwill, tangible and/or intangible assets or larger provisions for future expense, or both of them at the same time..