The need for roundwood transport capacity vary throughout the year. The need during a period is influenced mainly by the volume transported the period, the number of days during which transport can be carried out, seasonal variations in road conditions and the weight of the roundwood, and the origin of the wood (private forest owners/ forest companies). The need for transport capacity generally increase during the winter and in spring, after thawing. Lack of logging trucks combined with a lack of drivers for these trucks make it hard to hire extra help during periods of increased transport capacity needs. It is also very expensive to keep logging trucks for use only during these periods. In this thesis, two new concepts based on the partial transport by truck tractors have been examined, to find out the possibility for increased performance and flexibility.

Investor Relations is a function used by companies to compete for capital by creating relations with investors. It is a young function, earlier practiced by the same people who had responsible for exercising the Public Relations.Investor Relations has evolved a great deal lately but there are still no concrete theories behind the function. The aim though is clear and there are literature explaining how to practice the different parts. The most research within Investor Relations uses the theory of Relationship Marketing. Lately the two authors Hägg and Preiholt have started to examine what they call Financial Marketing since Investor Relations is about relations between actors on financial markets primarily.In this paper, we examine the aspect of information in Investor Relations.

This final thesis aim to create a support that can decrease the uncertainty when planning the cable drum flanges lines that produces cable drums in the interval 100 to 320cm in diameter at Vida Packaging in Hestra. The purpose attains through finding an optimal batch size that minimizes the total storage cost and order prime cost, without degenerate delivery capacity to the customer. Through survey the sale and stock balance development during 2005 and 2006 for cable drums in Hestra and give alternative suggestions how to plan the production after installing a new cable drum flanges line. The study also explores different ways of working during product change in existing nailing line, to minimize the order prime cost. Vida Packaging in Hestra is a part of the Vida group, which is Sweden?s largest privately owned sawmill group with seven sawmills placed all around southern Sweden.

The purpose of the thesis is to demonstrate how high frequency trading affects the stock market. The growing high frequency trading is affecting the game plan on the financial markets and concerns have grown about the high frequency users intentions with their business. It is difficult to receive an overall picture of the subject because the lack of previous research and even the research that exist do not show the entire picture. The thesis contributes to the research through a comprehensive picture of the present debate as well as the previous research through a literature study. Our results showed that high frequency trading provides liquidity to the market, there is a statistical connection between high frequency trading and volatility, no price manipulation is being used and there is a need for a supervision of the high frequency trading..

With the introduction of the Swedish Code for Corporate Governance in December 2004, most companies listed on the major Swedish stock exchanges were required to have a nomination committee responsible for, among other things, evaluating the incumbent board and nominating new candidates. This master thesis aims at analyzing the effects of these nomination committees on institutional investors in their corporate governance, through a qualitative study of 13 interviews. We have found that institutional investors have become more active through their participation in nomination committees and that they have gained more influence over the companies in which they own shares. We believe that in reality nomination committees have more influence over the selection of the board than was intended when the Swedish Code was written..

This paper attempts to investigate the correlation of 12 month abnormal returns and the fundamental value of stocks in theSwedish stock market between the year 2000-2011. Also, the paper tries to apply and evaluate the concept of the margin ofsafety. In estimating the fundamental value we use the residual income valuation model and three different estimationapproaches of the beta coefficient in order to correct for financial and operational biases. We find that our different portfoliosearn abnormal returns. However, this could be explained by the size effect and P/B effect.

This thesis studies the relationship between risk and the first day returns of Initial Public Offerings (IPO) by assessing the risk of each issuing company with a risk model that combine financial key ratios of importance. The study is based on 92 IPO?s that were made on the Stockholm OMX stock exchange during the period of 1997-2009. The point of departure was to investigate if the uncertainty created by the asymmetric information between investors and the issuing firm could be captured by predicting the possibility of failure in the future. This has been studied by applying Skogsvik?s probability of failure model on the 92 issuing firms.

In this study, we examine the presence and consequences of CEO overconfidence in the Swedish market. We identify overconfidence with two insider-trading based measures and find that overconfidence is apparent among one third of CEOs in companies listed on the Swedish stock market. We also find that these CEOs are more prone to carry out acquisitions, as the probability of conducting an acquisition increases by 27 % if the CEO is overconfident. However, we do not find evidence that acquisitions by overconfident CEOs are more value-destroying. This finding contradicts results from previous studies conducted on Anglo-Saxon markets that suggest that overconfidence has a negative impact on the value-creation in acquisitions.

Background: Enterprises often refer to their employees as ?Our most valuable assets? in annual reports and other written statements. In reality, employees are seen as an expense rather than an asset in annual reports and the voluntary disclosure is often insufficient. Human capital disclosure has been discussed through decades and the latest topic in voluntary disclosure is called integrated reporting. Knowledge firms should disclose more about their employees than industrial companies due to the fact that the employees are a considerably more important asset to these types of enterprises.Purpose: The purpose of this thesis is to study the disclosure of human capital, compare the disclosures between knowledge firms and industrial companies, and study the development of the human capital disclosures between the years 2003-2013.

The purpose of this paper is to find out which portfolio theory one should use during a financial crisis. We will examine two different portfolio theorys, the Minimum Variance portfolio and the beta portfolio.We have chosen to study two different portfolios, and followed their development during the financial crisis with its start in 2008 and the IT bubble with its start in the middle of 2000.The data has been collected from OMX internet database making it quantitative study. The beta portfolio's objective is to follow the index and the Minumim Variance portfolio´s objective is to spread the risk by investing in stocks with low volatility. By following the two different portfolios, and compare the development to the index, we will be able to determine which theory is most suitable to use during a recession. The studyperiods we chose were both in a recession and it turned out that the most appropriate portfolio to use was the Minimum Variance portfolio because stock in this portfolio tends to be less sensitive to economic fluctuations..

Background: Enterprises often refer to their employees as ?Our most valuable assets? in annual reports and other written statements. In reality, employees are seen as an expense rather than an asset in annual reports and the voluntary disclosure is often insufficient. Human capital disclosure has been discussed through decades and the latest topic in voluntary disclosure is called integrated reporting. Knowledge firms should disclose more about their employees than industrial companies due to the fact that the employees are a considerably more important asset to these types of enterprises.Purpose: The purpose of this thesis is to study the disclosure of human capital, compare the disclosures between knowledge firms and industrial companies, and study the development of the human capital disclosures between the years 2003-2013.

This thesis investigates the effect of profit growth and profitability on market capitalization amongst Nordic companies during the turbulent period 1997-2005. Our results suggest that profitability have a significant impact on market capitalization for six of the nine years studied, whereas profit growth does not seem to affect market capitalization. Consequently, our results imply that the effect of other factors on share price performance may be greater than previously suggested. These findings are only partly in line with theories on corporate valuation which suggest that market capitalizations are to a great extent driven by both profit growth and capital returns, regardless of whether the stock market is particularly unstable..

Detta arbete genomfördes under 10 veckor vårterminen 2009 på Bigso Box AB i Nybro,ett företag som tillverkar förvaringslösningar för hemmet och har stora kunder somIKEA.Bigso vill ha hjälp med att undersöka materialflödet och de lagernivåer företaget besitteri sin producerande fabrik i Litauen. Främsta målet med arbetet var att minskakapitalbindning i färdiga produkter samt på halvfabrikat i fabriken. Då Bigsos störstakund IKEA ställer extremt höga krav på leveranstider och företaget ibland hamnar eftermed ordrar önskar Bigso även att genom en större kontroll av materialflödet och genomatt hålla rätt lagernivåer även komma till rätta med detta problem..

Annual reports are by many considered to be companies primary way to inform their world where the CEO's words are read most carefully by shareholders. The purpose of this paper is to examine the design of the CEO's words in annual reports in light of the financial crisis in 2008. The study seeking explanations for change, similarities and differences in the various texts based on three themes which are results, future and confidence. In this qualitative study five CEO's words are explored by means of a discourse analysis, all from large Swedish industrial companies listed on the Stockholm Stock Exchange. Some of the results shown is that the CEO tends to talk about the company's results in a self-serving manner and CEO speaks more aboutm the results before than after the crisis.

Background: Investors have several options to choose from when the goal is to achieve the highest yield at the lowest cost and risk. Stocks are a common investment options, but is also associated with risks. Portfolios are usually constructed with several different assets to reduce the unsystematic risk of investment. Funds are similar to composite stock portfolios, the big difference is that they dealt with in their entirety and investors may not affect the fund's content. The problem remains that whether you choose stocks or mutual funds there is still uncertainty as to how the future will unfold.