The financial result of a transfer of ownership or external sale is to a great extent depend-ent on how the transfer is implemented and how the tax rules apply. The applicability of the Swedish tax rules regarding transfer of ownership in closely held companies largely de-pends on the interpretation of the prerequisite, equal or similar activity, which can be found in section 57, clause 4 of the Swedish Income Tax Act.The ruling made by the Supreme Administrative Court in RÅ 2010 ref. 11 changed the concept of equal or similar activity. The ruling lead to that the shares in a closely held com-pany was qualified due to that the capital from the original company had been transferred to the operating company. According to the ruling the original company had been split into several companies, thus was the companies considered to carry out equal or similar activity.

Background: The construction industry is Sweden?s single most important industry branch with a significant influence on Sweden?s wealth. The political restrictions that once controlled the industry are today almost gone. This combined with an unbalanced supply and demand situation on the Swedish constructions market, caused by urbanisation, has led to increased pressure on the Swedish construction companies who now are forced to find new methods in their struggle to contain or increase their competitive advantage. Purpose: The purpose of this thesis is to survey: which strategic variables are of great importance in today?s Swedish construction industry with focus on the four main actors, JM, NCC, PEAB and Skanska.

Companies and organizations recognize the importance of collaboration to develop responsibility and ability of change in the workplace. The concept of collaboration was a relatively new idea in business in the late 1980s. In a Nordic context, collaboration is a traditional approach that companies use successfully for competition, survival and development. Collaborative organizational efforts cover management of committed people who can help companies achieve flexibility, customer loyalty, innovation and economic success on a challenging and competitive market. Many theorists believe that collaboration is the key to integrating technology, financial competence and innovation.

The thesis aims to examine how companies optimize the human capital from a value creation perspective. The value creation will be related to transfer of knowledge, recruitment, staff turnover and development. The thesis has a deductive approach and six qualitative interviews have been conducted. The results from the interviews will be strengthened with a quantitative data analysis of two measurements; value added per employee and human capital efficiency. The theoretical framework includes definitions of human capital.

Background and problem discussion: Sustainability reporting has recently risen in importance and a rising number of companies choose to issue voluntary stand-alone sustainability reports. Their non-regulated nature increases the opportunity for management to angle the information in these disclosures to their own advantage. Lately the focus has shifted from examining what kind of information is provided in environmental disclosures, to analyzing how the information is presented.Purpose: The purpose is to examine if managers in the energy sector use optimistic tone when issuing sustainability reports. The aim is to find out if the tone applied in environmental disclosures is in congruence with either the environmental or economic performance or if an excessively positive tone is being used to mislead readers.Limitations: This study is limited to information found in environmental disclosures from private companies in the energy sector, issued in 2012 or 2013. Environmental performance is defined as the amount of CO2e emissions and economic performance refers to annual company revenues.Methodology: The quantification of optimistic tone is conducted using a content analysis, relying on a pre-specified wordlist and a pilot study.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the determinants of capital structure in Swedish small and medium sized firms. The study includes 24.859 Swedish firms which are further analyzed with regards to their financial characteristics. These characteristics consist of short term debt, long term debt and total leverage. The study compares the relationship between these characteristics and six independent variables.The result shows that profitability is the greatest determinant for capital structure in Swedish small and medium sized firms with regards to total leverage. When profitability increases the total leverage of the firm decreases.

AbstractFrom 1st of July 2003 it is compulsory for companies with an average number of ten employees the latest two financial years to account sick leave in the annual report.The government?s purpose with accounting of sick leave was partly to evoke an action from the companies? side in terms of motion as an effect due to the awareness of the level of the sick leave. The government was of the opinion that the companies had too deficient knowledge in sick leave and that the knowledge about causes and costs had to increase.In this paper three companies affected by the compulsory accounting of sick leave have been interviewed. The paper defines to only concern private companies. The companies were interviewed in purpose to form an opinion of whether the companies have changed their health promoting actions due to the application of the law.

Background and Problem: The lack of auditor independence is discussed being oneof the reasons to scandals such as Enron and HQ. A pricing strategy that has beendebated impairing auditor independence is low balling. To win a new client in atender process, audit firms supposedly offer an audit fee below cost and then increasethe fee the following years to recover the initial loss. The auditors? future financialinterest in the company due to the initial loss is by some believed to impair auditorindependence, which makes low balling in Sweden a relevant phenomenon to study.Aim of study: This thesis aims to explain if low balling exists on the Swedish auditmarket and if the size of companies affects the results of low balling.Methodology: To achieve the purpose of this thesis, a statistical study wasconducted.

The interest in companies that are based outside the cities has grown, and many of these companies have focused their activities around service. The countryside companies meet some difficulties in marketing and communication with other entrepreneurs. A network with service based companies in the countryside could help the individual companies to promote themselves and also give inspiration and new ideas to develop their business. The aim of this study is to investigate how a countryside network can be organized but also what conditions is needed to make the network function. The theory is based on a literature study of the three major topics "countryside", "networking" and "marketing".

This paper analyzes the auditor choices for a sample of 300 predominantly small Swedish firms, all located in Umeå. Our hypothesis was based on the complexity of a firm, the need of external financing, leverage, and the need of extra consultance from the auditfirm. Our definition of auditor quality is based on prior studies, and is frequently used by authors in this area. The assumption is based on that the auditor quality increases with the size of the auditfirm and the degree of the auditor. The auditor quality is therefor depending on the choice between an auditor from the group ?Big 5? or not, and the choice of an auditor with an higher degree.

Background: Today there are high claims on organizations to show a positive economic view. To satisfy the demands and expectations from interested parties it is very important to carefully plan the companies tied up capital and cash flows. Purpose: The purpose with the thesis is to describe what actions organizations take to resolve the conflict between showing a positive cash flow and the need to tie up capital.The purpose is also to explain the different factors that must be considered when making decisions regarding cash flow and capital tied up. Method: A qualitative study of the actions and factors wich must be considered when decisions in swedish construction companies are made regarding cash flow and capital tied up. Results: A model of the factors and actions that affect cash flow and capital tied up in projects.

Background and problem - Integrated reporting is a hot topic today and is predicted to be the future of companies? external reporting. In December 2013 a new framework on integrated reporting was released and one part of the framework concerns governance and how it supports the organization?s value creation. A recent study on integrated reporting in Sweden showed the area of governance to be poorly reported.

In January 2005 the emission allowance system was introduced within the European Union and the first period ends at the end of 2007. The system was introduced in order to decrease the wastes of carbon dioxide and the system is a part of ratifying the Kyoto ?protocol which first period runs between 2008-2012.The idea of the system is to reduce the wastes of carbon dioxide where it costs less to do so and the expenses for the society therefore are as diminutive as possible. Different theories explain that companies can benefit from environment legislation and can depending on the company?s attitude gain competitive advantages improve its productivity and thereby increase its profitability.With this in mind, the study aims at examining how the introduction of the emission trade system has influenced Swedish smaller companies in the distant heating industry, with focus on the factors attitude, innovation, competition and profitability.

The aim of this essay was to obtain an understanding about company owners thinking about the connection between having an own company, and the risks for an alcoholic abuse. The risk factor I was researching was stress, alcoholic culture, accessibility and rehabilitation.I have interviewed five owners of small companies, two women and three men, which represents four different kinds of branches. The theories I used in analysing the empirical findings where the theories of psychosocial work environment of Lazarus, Karaseks demand/control model, epidemiology- and culture perspective.I have found that the main stress factors for company owners where the economical stress and great load of work. The stress was also related to the fact that company owners of small companies often were alone with all the responsibility and problems.Women did not use alcohol very often as a tool to reduce stress. If individuals were using alcohol to reduce their stress, it also had to deal with their ability of coping and also what channels they had for coping..

The purpose of this study was to investigate a Swedish assessment centre and more specifically the predictive validity of its assessments of ten managers from a Swedish technological company. The study was made by interviews with these managers' executives in order to find out how well their opinion about their employees matched the assessments made by the assessment centre consultants. The results showed that the congruence of the managers' strengths was 74% whereas that of their weaknesses was 59%..