During the recent financial crisis there has been an intense debate regarding small enterprise?s possibilities to borrow money. Statements from interest groups and results from surveys among Swedish non-financial companies indicate that their situation has worsened. Credit worthy enterprises that under normal circumstances would not have any problems getting financing are now facing financial difficulties. In contrast, an economic report from the Bank of Sweden concludes that Sweden does not suffer from a severe credit rationing due to the financial crisis.

Today you can pay in many different ways. You can for instance use cash, credit cards, internet and now even with your mobile phone. Today we can also see new types of technical payment solutions being developed, such as Near Field Communication (NFC), mobile banking or through the use of QR-codes. We have today many different payment methods; therefore it?s interesting to see which payment method people prefer the most.

Background and problem: Financial reports are created for the users as decision support. Stakeholders are often subjects to information asymmetry. Banks represent one of the primary stakeholders and financiers of a company, and place great emphasis on financial reports in their credit assessment process. The question is, however, how useful the financial information actually is. According to previous research, banks consider accounting information as troublesome in some respects, mostly due to accounting choices and judgments.

The purpose of this bachelor-thesis is to investigate the possible effects of lease accounting on the estimation of bankruptcy. This is done by estimating the risk via prediction models based on accounting ratios for a sample of 43 listed firms in Sweden. Estimation is conducted twice for each firm, once base on unadjusted data as it is presented in the annual report of 2012, and one with data adjusted for operational leases (that is data is treated as if all leases present were to have been reported as financial leases). In the next step it is tested weather the predictive ability of the models is affected by this adjustment or not. For this purpose translation of bankruptcy risk into synthetic credit ratings via interest coverage ratios is done.

There are different types of risk, examples include Credit risk, liquidity risk and financial risk. In DeMarzo & Berk (2011, s. 293) is a study presented which is based on the yield of different types of financial assets between 1925 and 2009, the study show that a high risk gave substantially higher reward. With the study as a background, it is interesting to study practical risk management within participants of the financial markets of Sweden. In risk management there are several theories about whether risk can be calculated and analyzed with scientific methods in practice.

Investors? use borrowing as a way to profit from leverage advantages in their portfolios.When investors borrow with their securities as safety for the loan and the value of thesecurities decrease the investor can get a portfolio with more credit than what is covered bythe value of the securities and risk huge losses. To what extent an investor is allowed toborrow with his portfolio as safety depends on the bank or broker and varies between theproviders. By studying available material and in addition to that making an empirical study Iattempt to find out the reason for the varying degrees of leverage possibilities between thebrokers and how the degree of maximum borrowing on the securities are decided. Thefindings show that decision of leverage degree on a security is made after first making aquantitative analysis of the stocks volatility and liquidity and thereafter make a qualitativeanalysis of the company.

The new Swedish Companies Act allows Swedish companies to issue two instruments that were previously prohibited: mandatory convertibles and participating debentures. The aim of the thesis is to conduct a cross sectional study of Swedish corporate hybrid securities, especially in the light of the new Companies Act. The cross sectional study also includes areas such as credit rating, accounting and tax. The thesis concludes that it is possible, under Swedish law, to issue corporate hybrid securities that qualify for both high equity credit and tax deductible interest payments. The use of certain hybrid provisions are, however, restrained by Swedish company law.

Banks carry a great responsibility when it comes to the financial systems in our society. Disturbance in the credit system affects both lender and borrower. All financial institutions must therefore carefully estimate their risk exposure. This assessment enables them to cover themselves from losses with appropriate capital buffers as main guardian. In order to prevent bank crises and also to maintain financial stability in general, new regulations concerning analysis and preventive actions were introduced on the 1st of February 2007.

It is mandatory for the countries in the European Union with company audit, still the countries can separately choose to exclude smaller companies from this rule. Most companies in the EU use this exception, Sweden is one of the few countries that does not. The Swedish government has recently announced that an inquiry will be made to examine the effect of an abolishment of the statutory audit for smaller companies.This study examines in what extent car selling companies use revised material when they give costumers credit and the consequences of an abolishment of the statutory audit for these companies. The conclusion of the study is that car selling companies feel secure knowing that their costumers have been audited. Most companies interviewed, buy credit information from external sources.The persons interviewed have a hard time knowing the outcome of the abolishment of the statutory auditing.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the proposed leasing standard's potential effects on stakeholders' financial key ratios and estimated bankruptcy risk via prediction models based on accounting ratios. This is achieved by adjusting the financial statements in accordance with the three most widely used ways of dealing with operating leases at date; capitalizing using a multiple, capitalizing through a present value method and to not adjust for them at all. Since the discounted method is said to reflect the proposed standard the closest, this version will be compared against the two other versions. The research is based on Nordic retail companies due to their high share of leases. The study shows that the unadjusted key ratios and estimated bankruptcy risks tend to be too low and would therefore deteriorate in combination with the new standard, when again the multiple method results in too weak key ratios and high estimated bankruptcy risk and would therefore tend to improve in combination with the new standard.

Account receivables tie up large amounts of capital in. Various reports show that the actual time for customer to pay their invoices is getting longer. This is a problem both from a society and a business economic perspective. The purpose of the essay is to find out if Swedish companies have longer credit days than normal contractual terms of payment and if so, can the business cycle or the geographical distribution of sales have an impact and does it make a difference if the companies have an active monitoring of the actual customer credit days. To answer this, we studied 12 listed companies in four different sectors between the years 2000-2008. In the analysis, we reason about the results of the study and how the various factors may have influenced the outcome.

This study aims to scrutinize the four major banks in Sweden on how their profit havedeveloped over a time span of 15 years, whether stricter regulations have had anyimpact on financial key ratios and if there is any correlation between the banksprofitability and their risk taking. The period covered is the years 2000-2014. Thefigures are annually and the four major banks are; Handelsbanken, Nordea,Skandiviska Enskilda Banken (SEB) and Swedbank.The findings are that financial key ratios that include net income are pro-cycle whereSwedbank has the biggest volatility over the period and that the three other banks areless, but clear pro-cycle. There are also indications that stricter rules have madeimpact on the volatility of the profitability even though the period covered is notenough to ensure this claim. Nordea has had the lowest and most stable capital ratiothroughout the period and the other three banks lowered their debt-to-equity ratiosignificantly after the financial crisis in 2008.

The title of this thesis is ?The preconditions of the acquisition guarantee- hard to design working political reforms?. The acquisition guarantee (förvärvsgaranti) is a form of credit guarantee issued by the Swedish government to credit institutes that give out housing loans to debtors with poor credit history. The reform hasn´t been used in any substantial extent.The purpose of the study is to investigate whether you could identify any problems with the preconditions that the governmental agency BKN was given to implement the acquisition guarantee, and if so describe which these problems are.Two questions are answered:1.      What preconditions for a working implementation of the guarantee, in the form of rules, objectives and directives was offered by the government in their steering of BKN?2.      How did the structural preconditions for a working implementation of the guarantee look like?By doing a text analysis of central documents I find that the lack of outcome could to some extent be related to weaknesses in how the reform was formulated.

Problem: How has Nordea been adapted and influenced by the change of Basel II and how have the employees reacted on the new change?Purpose: This essay has a purpose to study how Basel II has influenced the credit rating at Nordea. We also want to study how the employees have reacted to the new change.Method: To receive the information that was necessary for this study interviews were performed with the employees at Nordea. The interviews were an effective way to start a discussion and by that we received important information.Basel II is new capital cover rules that the Swedish banks have introduced. These new rules mean that it will become more important with safety when it comes to risk management and credit giving.

Through certain exceptions in the Swedish regulation on credit agreements for consumers, a new form of instrument for credits has arisen on the national market. The instrument, which is most commonly known as easy credits and was first seen on the Swedish market for consumer credits in 2006, has developed to become part of a vast problem with excessive debt incursion. In order to counteract this development and to harmonise the internal market within the EU, directive 2008/48 EC on credit agreements for consumers was introduced in 2008. In Sweden, the implementation of the directive has led to a proposition for a new regulation on credit agreements for consumers (SFS 2009/10:242 Ny konsumentkreditlag) coming into effect on the 1 January 2011. The proposition puts up stricter rules on creditors granting consumer credits in their course of business, and revokes the former exemption on information and practices preliminary to the conclusion of the credit agreement for minor credits.