Purpose: The purpose of this thesis is to test for the existence of Capital Structure Arbitrage oppertunities in the equity-credit markets. Methodology: The mispricing of Credit Default Swap contracts are calculated and used as input in an Equity-Credit market trading strategy. The returns are then evaluated with a modified Value-at-Risk simulation. Theoretical perspectives: A Merton-based structural model, CreditGrades, is used for credit pricing and a mispricing-convergence trading-strategy between the credit and equity markets is implemented. Empirical foundation: Daily quotes for the Credit Default Swap spread of 37 European firms were collected for a period of two years, as well as equity-prices for the same period and the previous two years, used for model calibration.

This study investigates a method for identifying human capital and its effect on company valuation. We devise a measure for the efficiency of human capital based on the personnel cost. We include all companies listed in the financial and industry sector on Nasdaq OMX Stockholm in an attempt to examine human capital and its effect on firm valuation. Our results indicate that a higher efficiency of human capital has a positive effect on return on assets. However, we find that our measure can be interpreted in two ways; either as a firm?s level of human capital efficiency or its dependency on human capital, to achieve its net sales and revenue.

Introduction: There was a reduction in Sweden of the share capital in 2010, in which the share capital was reduced from 100 000 SEK to 50 000 SEK. The reason behind the reduction of the share capital was to enable more people to start limited liability companies in Sweden. Meanwhile in Europe, they questioned the function of the share capital, and as a result of this discussion a number of European countries have abolished the requirement for the share capital in limited liability companies.Purpose: The purpose of this study is to investigate what meaning the share capital has to entrepreneurs based on their own businesses, and to see what function the share capital have for the creditors.Problem: What are the meaning of the share capital for today´s entrepreneurs and its creditors?Methodology: The study is based on a qualitative research method in which a cross-sectional study was done with four small limited liability companies and four creditors.Conclusions: The share capital functions and meaning has lost its intended meaning as creditor protection and the help to facilitate the raising of capital. The share capitals intention has to some extent been eroded.

En sammanfattning av uppsatsen på maximalt 8000 tecken..

In this thesis, the Swedish venture capital market and its profitability is analyzed. Venture capital is defined as capital that is invested in the early stages of a company's life cycle, in the two investment stages seed/start-up and expansion.A common view is that the profitability of Swedish venture capital has not been, is not and will probably not become high either. With this in mind, we try to answer to the following questions in this thesis:? What has the profitability of Swedish venture capital actually been historically?? Which reasons could be found in order to explain the historical returns for Swedish venture capital, and which factors has been identified in international comparative studies between venture capital markets?In order to answer these questions, data showing historical returns for the Swedish, European and American venture capital market has been gathered, an extensive literature study has been performed, and three interviews with participants from the Swedish venture capital market has been conducted.We conclude that the historical returns of Swedish venture capital is in line with the general view that they have been low. We also see a trend where Swedish venture capital funds that are not specialized in one investment stage generate lower returns than more specialized funds.

Under de senaste åren har antalet venture capital företag och intressent kring denna bransch ökat mycket kraftigt. Vi undersöker i denna uppsats hur venture capital företags beslutsprocess ser ut vid utvärdering av potentiella portföljbolag och vilka faktorer venture capital företagen anser vara viktigast i denna bedömning. Vi undersöker också hur de engagerar sig i styrningen av sina portföljbolag. För att beskriva och förklara detta har vi gjort en fallstudie av två venture capital företag. De resultat vi kom fram till var att entreprenören bakom portföljbolaget var den enskilt viktigaste faktorn vid investering.

Previous research has discussed how voluntary disclosure relates to the cost of equity capital. Theories of estimation risk support a negative association between disclosure and cost of equity capital, as empirically documented by Botosan (1997) among others. In this Bachelor thesis we investigate whether such a relationship exists on the Swedish capital market. Using the CAPM to estimate the cost of equity capital and a disclosure index based on Aktiespararen?s annual evaluation of corporate disclosure, we test a model where disclosure explains cost of equity capital.

Studien undersöker de existerande projekt och projektidéer som finns i regionen. Sedan genomförs utifrån teorier om innovativa zoner en utvärdering av projektens potential att sprida förnyelse..

The major difference between venture capital-firms and other financiers is that their business idea is not only providing capital but also knowledge in business development. The ownership structure of an venture capital-firm can be private as well as public. The Swedish government is today one of the major actors in the Swedish venture capital-industry. The purpose of this study is to shed light on how venture capital-firms involve itself in its portfolio firm and if this contributes to an increased value of the portfolio firm. We also try to shed light on differences in how a public and a private venture capital-firm gets involved in its portfolio firm and if there is any difference in how they can contribute to added value.We have chosen to interview two public and two private venture capital-firms and one of their portfolio firms.

This study examines the equity cost of capital between two periods distinguished by substantial differences in IPO activity. In light of the stemmed IPO flow to the Swedish stock exchange in 2012, this study regards the conjecture that the IPO count is related to the prevailing cost of equity capital for certain periods. By application of the Residual Income Valuation model the cost of equity capital is abstracted from sampled stock prices and compared at two points in time for which extreme highs and lows of IPO activity were observed. Using randomized samples from 1999 and 2012, significant differences between the estimated costs of capital are established. The findings indicate that the equity cost of capital, much as it may help influence, nevertheless plays a subordinated role in the going-public decision..

The business world of today is characterized by the fact that knowledge plays a far greater role than it did before in the companies? production. In many companies, the human resources constitute the main part of the total assets. It can for example be the employees? knowledge, competence or power of initiative.

This thesis has two aims: The main purpose is to describe and illustrate how a large Ltd. company can use voluntary redundancy as a tool for restructuring. The additional purpose is to challenge the concept of voluntary redundancy trough outlining alternative ways of reaching the intended achievements of the voluntary redundancy programme. The theoretical framework that has been used primarily contains knowledge assets theories. The chosen theories are intellectual capital and knowledge management theory to approach and analyse the empirical findings.

This study examines the equity cost of capital between two periods distinguished by substantial differences in IPO activity. In light of the stemmed IPO flow to the Swedish stock exchange in 2012, this study regards the conjecture that the IPO count is related to the prevailing cost of equity capital for certain periods. By application of the Residual Income Valuation model the cost of equity capital is abstracted from sampled stock prices and compared at two points in time for which extreme highs and lows of IPO activity were observed. Using randomized samples from 1999 and 2012, significant differences between the estimated costs of capital are established. The findings indicate that the equity cost of capital, much as it may help influence, nevertheless plays a subordinated role in the going-public decision..

Women ledaers and profitability, is there a correlation? Earlier research show different outcome on the correlation between women leaders and profitability. A Swedish consultant firm, Caran has a belief that more women leaders would create more financial profit, we ask us if that is the true situation. Using two different IC measurement methods we have shown the difficulties in calculate intagible resources, which methods that can/ can not be used and if women leders create financial value. We found the women leaders in Caran to add more value per dollar spent on the woman leaders than the value added per dollar spent on men leaders.

Does goodwill affect the cost of capital? Goodwill is an asset which is characterized by much uncertainty regarding both what it is and how much it is really worth. Based on economic theory about information risk and principal-agent problems as well as theory regarding the cost of capital we test for the hypothesis that debt and equity investors perceive goodwill as something risky and hence demand compensation for taking on this extra risk. The proxies used for the cost of capital are cost of debt, beta and the EP-ratio. On a general level we find that increasing the level of goodwill seems to result in higher cost of capital as represented by the three proxies.