Prior studies have shown that earnings management can be used either to inform or to mislead investors about the future performance of a company. However, few studies have examined the impact of earnings management on forecasting return on equity (ROE). The aim of this thesis is to investigate whether the ability to forecast next year's ROE is improved when taking earnings management, measured as discretionary accruals, into account. This is examined by comparing a forecast model that takes the magnitude of discretionary accruals into consideration with a model that does not. The study is based on companies that were listed on the Stockholm Stock Exchange during 2002-2012.

This paper treats the question about how the internationally established company, Apple, is affected by intern or extern events when it comes to the trade market. The purpose of the study is to investigate if chosen events create abnormal return on Apples stock market. The chosen research area is Steve Jobs three sick-listings, It-bubble and the purchase of the search engine company Siri. The reason of writing about this is the big interest for the stock market and its function.This study methodological starting position is quantitative done by an event study, with qualitative feature done by an interview with an expertise within this area. When analyzing the empirics, we have used the efficient market theory that says that information should not affect the stock market in the degree that abnormal return creates.

The purpose of this paper is to compare two different portfolio strategies consisting of insider transactions and stock recommendations and examine whether they posses any information advantage.  The portfolios are balanced once every three-, six- and twelve- months in the period of 2007-2009. Our results show a pattern for these investment strategies. The portfolio consisting of insider transactions generates a positive return in equity in a negative market environment and the opposite reaction in a positive environment. The result for the portfolio consisting of stock recommendations show a positive return of equity in positive environment and the opposite effect in negative environment. The pattern that has been observed can be classified as an anomaly.

The purpose of this study was to examine earnings quality and earnings management in U.S. ex-post failed firms. A quantitative study was made, using the Modified Jones Model, to identify abnormal accruals up to six years before bankruptcy. 9 003 continuing firms and 187 bankrupt firms, active sometime between 1990 and 2010, were examined. The study concludes that U.S.

Purpose: To examine how IR-related press releases affect share price for stock companies, and to explore how said companies practice Investor Relations.Methods: The study was conducted using an event study as well as e-interviews. The event study has a quantitative deductive research approach where the market model is used for calculating the abnormal return based on press releases. The e-interviews have a qualitative research approach and follow a semi structured interview guide. The study includes all listed stock companies within the Swedish construction industry and includes press releases from the last decade.Theory: The study is based on the efficient market hypothesis and its semi strong form, theories within Investor Relations and previous research.Results: The event study shows a significant negative abnormal return during a four day period starting the day after the press release event. The negative abnormal return could derive from investor relations being used by companies as damage control, or that the investors? expectations are too high as a result of IR.

The purpose of this study is to examine the effects of joint venture announcements on stock prices behavior and simultaneously to test the German stock market (Frankfurter Wertpapierbörse) for efficiency. We tried not only to analyze the general impacts of a JV-announcement but also to look for differences in the market response to announcements of different types of joint ventures, namely: domestic, international, horizontal and vertical. Our expectations of efficient market were confirmed during our paper, which employed the technique of the standard event study. The calculation of abnormal returns which are the signals for market efficiency or inefficiency respectively were based on the market model, establishing linear relationship between the return on the market and the return on an individual security. The parameters of the model were obtained through regression analysis..

Background:It is always fascinating to observe the events that affect the stock market, especially as the numbers of influencing factors are so many and various. Political elections are important events in society and affect the corporate environment in different ways depending on which political party that is in power. This brings up the question of whether political elections are important enough to affect the stock market; and it is this question we intend to analyse in this paper.Purpose:The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether political elections affect the stock market and to discuss the reasons for any possible affect that might be found.Procedure:An appropriate and thoroughly tested method to investigate if an event affects the stock market or not, is to do an event study. Subsequently we chose to do an event study on whether the Swedish general elections in 2002 and 2006 affected the Stockholm Stock Exchange. In order to give the analysis more depth we have also chosen to interview people with knowledge of the stock market.

This thesis examines underpricing and the long run performance of IPO firms on the Swedish equity market during 1994-2010. We further investigate whether any correlation exist between underpricing and post-IPO performance during 36 months. We use a sample of 80 IPO firms. To examine the aftermarket performance we compare total return of each firm with a matching industry index. In order to strengthen our analysis, we run a second test, comparing actual return for each firm with expected return, adjusted for firm specific risk.

We acknowledge the lack of empirical studies of the performance of analyst target prices in the Swedish stock market by examining the profitability of target prices for stocks publicly traded on the Stockholm Stock Exchange. We use consensus target prices issued between 2006-2010 and create two different strategies to observe the abnormal returns generated during this period. Going long in the top decile stocks with the best target prices and going short in the bottom decile stocks with the worst target prices generates a statistically significant abnormal buy-and-hold return of 8.9%. An active strategy with daily portfolio rebalancing and a timely response to target price changes generates a less significant monthly alpha of 1.4% against CAPM. The results show to be robust against the size effect discovered by Fama and French.

Huvudsyftet med uppsatsen är att se hur ett företags annonsering om återköp av aktier påverkar dess börskurs i Sverige. Som delsyfte kommer även en undersökning göras om huruvida reaktionen skiljer sig mellan olika branscher samt om Sveriges reaktion skiljer sig från den tidigare forskningen i USA och i Storbritannien. Undersökningen har genomförts med hjälp av en eventstudie där den abnormala avkastningen beräknas. En intervju utförs för att bekräfta resultatet.Resultatet gav en sammanlagd kumulativ avkastning på 0,57 %. Det visade även att det finns en skillnad mellan olika branschers reaktion på en annonsering av ett återköp.

Share repurchases in Sweden has since legalization in 2000 gained momentum. Similar to other corporate events, there are studies that examine whether this affects the share price performance. With studies in the U.S. that measured excess returns of approximately 3,5 percent on the announcement day; Swedish buybacks, holding a tighter regulation is of interest to study. The Stockholm Stock Exchange regulation regarding reporting is also similar to the Stock Exchange in Hong Kong.

I den ha?r uppsatsen analyseras avkastningen pa? bo?rsintroduktioner genomfo?rda av Private Equity-firmor pa? den svenska marknaden under perioden 1993-2011. Studien underso?ker huruvida bo?rsintroduktioner genomfo?rda av Private Equity genererar en abnormal avkastning relativt bo?rsintroduktioner som genomfo?rts av icke Private Equity, sammanlagt 97 bo?rsintroduktioner. Ba?da urvalsgrupperna relateras gentemot ja?mfo?relseindex i form av kontrollfirmor pa? kort och la?ng sikt.

En eventstudie gjordes på aktierekommendationer publicerade på Privata Affärers hemsida mellan 2009-2010. Publiceringsdagen för rekommendationen utgjorde eventdagen och ett eventfönster på fem dagar innan och fem dagar efter. Rekommendationerna delades upp i olika kategorier för att kunna se skillnader mellan köp, avvakta och säljrekommendationer samt för Mid Cap och Small Cap. Uppsatsen kunde inte påvisa någon generell statistisk signifikant överavkastning i någon av de undersökta kategorierna..

Syfte:Att på den svenska marknaden undersöka effekten av resultatmanipulering, efter införandet av Svensk kod för bolagsstyrning. Metod:Kvantitativ datainsamling använd's för att utföra regressioner del's för beräkning av EM, del's för identifiering av signifikanta förklaringsvariabler. Informationen hämta's bland annat från årsredovisningar, SIS Ägarservice och Datastream. Studien har en deduktiv ansat's. Teoretiska perspektiv:Ett antal bolagsstyrningsteorier har behandlat's rörande agentprincipalförhållanden, institutionellt ägande samt separation av ägande och kontroll.

This paper aims to investigate abnormal returns for rivals to bidder targets in connection with the announcement of the bid. The study is based on 38 bids placed between September 2006 - January 2011 and 137 rival firms listed on Nasdaq OMX Nordic. We measure cumulative abnormal returns, CAR, for rival firms through an event study. We find that rival firms earn significant positive CAR in connection with the announcement of the bid. This is in line with the two-sided signaling effect presented by Akhigbe et al.