In the beginning of the 21st century, a number of scandals were pointed out in the US. Enterprises like WorldCom and Enron went into bankruptcy, and inaccuracies in their account were made public. This led to the fact that a new law, SOX 404, was established in the US. The law says in its whole that enterprises must have better control of their internal accounts.The aim with this paper is to examine how the surrounding world of an organization with stakeholders as well as other surrounding elements, affect or force an organization to change, and how a changing process is introduced and accomplished.We carried through a survey as well as interviews at the actual organization. Furthermore, we investigated why the change has come into practice as well as attitudes and opinions towards the change, and lastly, how the changing process has been accomplished.

The aim of this small thesis is to investigate if the probability of business failure is higher at the time of divestment than at the time of acquisition for portfolio companies that have been subject to private equity ownership. The background for this thesis is the widespread critique aimed at private equity firms, claiming that they increase the risk in their portfolio companies. We have performed a study of 53 buyout transactions, involving Swedish manufacturing companies, covering a time span of 13 years, from 1995 to 2007. We find evidence of an increased risk of business failure for the portfolio companies with a short forecasting horizon (within one year). The absolute increase in the sample is however small.

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.

The Swedish consumer electronic industry has recently experienced an increasingly intensive price war. The price war has forced some operators in the business to declare bankruptcy, as the only way to compete has been by driving down prices. A challenge that retail chains in the consumer electronics industry is facing is to increase their margins. If store personnel can success with upselling, the companies will increase their profits. The purpose of this paper is to examine if the sales people in the consumer electronic industry can influence the customer to buy a more expensive product and what the effects the upselling has on the customers' attitudes.

The Swedish automotive industry has since way back been struggling with bankruptcy, abroad buy outs and staff cuts. Competition and pressure on prices are two factors that affect the automotive industry. Because of this, the companies are pressured to continuously developing their work in addition to be able to compete on the market. The aircraft industry has successfully managed to implement additive manufacturing (AM) and for motorsport has several components manufactured with AM been used. When AM is used as a manufacturing method, there are a number of advantagesthat follows.

In a time of economic turmoil and financial crisis profitability matters rise higher and higher on company agendas. Many companies are pressured to find profitability to avoid layoffs or even bankruptcy. Profitability essentially depends on the margin on the product or service sold and the costs associated with selling these products or services and hence these areas are of vital importance if companies are to improve profitability. Previous research has focused, for the most part, on product profitability while customer profitability has received less attention. This study is based on a case study of a Swedish publishing house and aims to investigate how the company?s Cost-to-Serve varies between its distribution channels.

Den första januari 2009 ändrades Förmånsrättslagen och bankerna har återigen fått särskild förmånsrätt med 100 procent vid utmätning och konkurs. Den lagändring som genomfördes 2004 innebar endast 55 procent och allmän förmånsrätt för bankerna och fick inte den effekt som regeringen önskat och det blev svårare för företag att låna pengar från banken. De alternativa finansieringsformerna ökade då bankerna inte längre hade samma säkerhet vid konkurser utan då fanns istället säkerheten i objektet. Genom de undersökningar som gjorts där resultat visat de negativa effekterna beslutades om att återställa bankernas förmånsrätt. Frågan är om återgången kommer att förändra bankernas kreditgivning.

Purpose: To investigate if Altman´s Z´-score model, which calculates financial distress, can be applied on companies established in Sweden and if the financial crisis in 2008 made previously healthy companies go bankrupt.Methodology: Quantitative studies with a positivistic foundation. Empirical data will be collected in order to examine if there is generalizability among the studied objects. Conclusions will be made by comparing the empirical data with the theoretical foundation. Financial distress in firms will be measured.Theoretical perspectives: Altman´s Z´-score model, designed to predict financial distress in private firms.Empirical foundation: A selection of 93 private firms that have gone bankrupt in the years 2008, 2009 or 2010. The firms selected all have a turnover that exceeds 20 million SEK.

Year 1996 a new law was introduced in Sweden, the law of corporate restructuring, what purpose was to help companies in financial distress. Now, nine years later the procedure hasn?t been successful. This is what this thesis is trying to find out.This thesis main question is: What distinguishes the companies that have filed for a corporate restructuring, according to the financial position?The purpose of this thesis is to find out if key ratios can be used to distinguish the companies that filed for corporate restructuring.

Large companies in today?s business environment are to a great extent depending on their credit score by rating institutes like Moody?s and Standard & Poor?s. There is however indications that these big institutes are not always rating companies accurately. This is why this thesis aims at developing a new credit rating model, CRITA-Score, with the objective of determining a company?s financial health more accurately.

The crisis on Wall Street. This essay is a comparative study of how two business newspapers report on the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers Holdings in September 2008. Seven articles from the Swedish European financial newspaper Affärsvärlden (Business World) and five articles from the Chinese-Asian news agency XINHUA FINANCE are examined. The aim is to analyze, understand and evaluate from a rhetorical perspective. My thesis is that rhetors storytelling can tell us more about how we cope with crisis in the global economic discourse. The texts can portray man as a narrative creature when identification as a rational actor is not enough. The analytical methods used are linguistic analysis with an emphasis on metaphor analysis, narrative analysis based on pentad - Critical dramatism, and discourse analysis with doxological outlook. The results show that both newspapers seek to defend the global economic discourse, but they do so in different ways. Affärsvärlden advocates calmness and conveys a cautious attitude. The heart of the crisis, as well as its solution, is on Wall Street. XINHUA advocates control and expresses confidence in authorities and the system. Asia is presented as Wall Street's savior..

The law of preferential rights has, since the 70?s, given företagshypotek a high priority after a company has claimed bankruptcy. After the costs concerning the insolvent estate and the liens, företagshypotek has received full refund. The effect has been that the unprioritized creditors often have not recieved any of their claims after the bank have re-cieved theirs. Many countries have during the last decades deviated from this law and in 2003, Sweden decided to take the same path.

Abstract The internationalisation of a company is enabled by integration of markets. New markets mean new revenues, but also demand capital to finance the expansion. To bring in new capital may offer new possibilities but also higher debt-equity ratios, which affect how external interested parties value the company. This thesis, inspired by previous and mainly US based research, researches the debt-equity ratio of Swedish multinational and domestic companies, sampled from the Stockholm Stock Exchange. The research questions have focused on the impact of certain internationalisation variables on the debt-equity ratio; how does the debt-equity ratio differ between international and domestic companies? Can a difference be explained by the degree of internationalisation? Can a difference be better explained by the presence of international ownership? By measuring the concept internationalisation as both trade and presence, the questions were operationalised into four hypotheses.

Bakgrund: Många företag går i konkurs varje år vilket är förknippade med kostnader för de enskilda intressenterna och för samhället i stort. För att kunna vidta eventuella åtgärder innan konkursen är ett faktum är det av intresse att veta om någon av de modeller som forskare tagit fram för att förutspå konkurser faktiskt fungerar.Syfte: Syftet med denna undersökning är att ta reda på om det går att applicera någon av ett urval av etablerade konkursmodeller på svenska industri- och tillverkningsföretag.Teori: Studien kommer att testa tre olika forskares modeller och metoder: Altmans, Platts och Platts samt Pompes och Bilderbeeks.Metod: I denna studie kommer enbart en deduktiv forskningsansats att användas och datainsamlingen är kvantitativ då nyckeltal hämtas från de aktuella företagens årsredovisningar. Urvalet baseras på de företag som ansökte om konkurs under år 2011 och de som representerar kontrollgruppen har slumpmässigt valts ut bland de företag inom avgränsningen som inte gått i konkurs det aktuella året.Resultat och slutsats: Altmans och Platts och Platts modeller visar sig inte vara applicerbara på svenska företag. Dock är vissa av Pompes och Bilderbeeks nyckeltal tillämpliga till att använda för konkursprognostisering för svenska företag..

The financial crisis in 2008, effected companies around the globe and forced them to change their operational strategies, in order to survive. Companies with international links needed to consider external effects and due to that adapt their strategies on a global level. Demands for goods and service were decreasing and companies could only manage the cost during a recession to not face bankruptcy. Organisations need to reconsider their optimal strategy as this will determine their future outcome when managing a crisis as the one in 2008. British Airways - Air Cargo is a global company with an international network which serves about 80 countries, with about 200 destinations.