Syftet med examensarbetet är att tillföra ny kunskap inom den svenska earnings management forskningen genom att undersöka kapitalstrukturens eventuella korrelation med earnings management. Uppsatsen har en kvantitativ metodansats, paneldata regressionsanalys används för att genomföra studien. Arbetet grundar sig i tidigare forskning på earnings management området. Vidare prövas Debt-to-Equity teorin mot den svenska marknaden. Den empiriska undersökningen utgår från 231 företag listade på den svenska börsen under tidsperioden 2003-2007 och en negativ korrelation konstateras mellan earnings management och kapitalstruktur.

The aim of this study is to examine and analyze how management control mechanisms evolve within an organization when a requirement of return on equity is imposed, as well as why the mechanisms evolve the way they do. A case study was performed on Samhall, a Swedish state-owned company, which has the aim to help people with disabilities develop by providing meaningful work. The framework provided by Samuelsson, defining five means of control in organizations was used to structure the study. Further, theories within New Public Management have been used to provide the reader with a proper background to the research area. Theories from the institutional field of organizational research have also been used to provide further depth to our analysis.

This paper examines how debt cancellation, given under the HIPC-initiative, has affected corruption over the period 2000-2006. The examination is foremost interesting due to earlier research showing that high corruption leads to unequal distribution of economic resources. This, combined with the objective of the HIPC initiative to reduce poverty, indicates that combating corruption must be successful in order to fulfill the goals of the initiative. A linear regression shows that countries that have benefited from the HIPC-initiative indeed have a lower corruption than other countries. A panel-data analysis shows on the other hand that no effect on corruption due to debt cancellation or reforms undertaken in the program can be confirmed..

I Sverige pågår idag en samhällsdebatt angående huruvida private equity?industrin bidrar till den ekonomiska utvecklingen genom att skapa långsiktigt starka och lönsamma bolag eller om de förstör värde genom nedskärningar och bolagsuppdelningar. Med private equity menas riskkapitalbolag som investerar i onoterade företag, så kallade portföljbolag, med avsikten att tillföra värde inför en avyttring några år senare, vanligen 3-5 år. Syftet med denna studie är att studera värdeutvecklingen på ett antal av dessa svenska portföljbolag, från riskkapitalbolagens avyttring till och med två år efter försäljningen. I studien har nyckeltal med fokus på lönsamhet, tillväxt och kapitalstruktur tagits fram för portföljbolagen.

The last few decades largeincreases in institutional and foreign ownershipin Swedish listed companies have created a concernthat the traditionalSwedish ownership model are disappearing.With increasing globalizationand ever morecapital-intensive markets, so have great owners forced to admitcapital fuelled institutionaland foreign investors into their companies. By from an agency theoryperspective examine how different ownershiptypes and ownershipconstellations affects the cost ofequity, we want to see if there is reason for concern. Is the change in ownership structure affecting theSwedish listed firms?Our results show that the owneridentity or ownership constellations don?t affect the cost of equity that much.The only owner-identity that shows a significant correlation with the cost ofequity is the institutions and they relate to a lower cost of equity. Theresults show that companies with two controlling shareholders relates to lowercost of equity which can show that ownership structure affects the cost.

Sammanfattning Utvecklingen och utbredningen av Leveraged buyouts förvärv har ökat i Sverige de senaste 5-15 åren, detta kan vara ett resultat av ett mer flöde på kapital och intresse av att investera. Dessutom har förmodligen den allt mer mogna private equity marknad tillsammans med det ökande behovet av effektivisering av bolagen bidragit till att allt fler förvärv sker med belånat kapital. Vi har i denna kvalitativa uppsats intervjuat tre private equity företag med syfte att försöka klargöra vilka investeringskriterier som ligger till grund för en leveraged buyout-transaktion, samt vilka branscher som lockar dessa private equity företagen. I slutsatsen har det framkommit att PE-företagen gör investeringar i mogna företag utan några preferenser på specifika branscher. Vidare har vi funnit att de två viktigaste faktorer som PE-företagen tar i beaktning vid investeringar är stabila kassaflöden och kompetent företagsledning i målbolagen..

Syfte: Syftet med uppsatsen är att genom empirisk undersökning besvara frågan vilken mätbar effekt sponsring har på varumärkets värde, Brand Equity. Genom att besvara den frågan är också syftet att utveckla en modell som visar vilka faktorer samt vilka delar i varumärket som påverkas av sponsring.Metod: Vi har valt att genomföra detta arbete genom att använda fallstudier. Dessa har vi genomfört med hjälp av kvalitativa intervjuer med representanter för Gevalia, Läkerol och Länsförsäkringar Gävleborg, vilka samtliga sponsrar Brynäs. Vi har bearbetat intervjuerna för att sedan analysera dem mot vår teoretiska referensram. Vi har valt att dela upp analyserna efter huvudområden som rör sponsring och varumärke.Resultat & slutsats: Vi har utvecklat en modell som visar sponsringens effekter på Brand Equity, men dessa är dock inga tydliga mätbara effekter då vi inte kunnat uttyda några genom studien.

Titel: Private equity-ägande och dess ekonomiska konsekvenser hos portföljbolagBakgrund: Det finns omstridda resultat inom den akademiska världen när det gäller vilka ekonomiska konsekvenser private equity-ägande leder till. Olika studier har kommit fram till att private equity-ägda portföljbolag både över- och underpresterar gentemot jämförbara företag. Skillnaderna i studiernas resultat tycks påverkas av vilken marknad som studien är utförd på. Detta då studier som är gjorda på marknader med spridd ägarkoncentration tenderar att visa på att private equity-ägande leder till positiva ekonomiska konsekvenser och tvärtom på marknader med koncentrerat ägande. Tidigare studier har också valt att fokusera på att studera private equity-ägda portföljbolag under högkonjunktur eller under både hög- och lågkonjunktur, det finns således till vår kännedom ingen tidigare studie som isolerar sin studie till att endast inkludera lågkonjunktur, vilket understryker relevansen av denna studie.Syfte: Syftet med denna uppsats är att genom en empirisk analys avgöra om och vilka ekonomiska konsekvenser PE-ägande får hos portföljbolag under en lågkonjunktur på den svenska marknaden som präglas av hög ägarkoncentration.Metod: Denna studie har en deduktiv ansats där fokus ligger på teorier som berör private equity-bolags applicering av strategiska och organisatoriska förändringar hos portföljbolag.

Venture capital firms and private equity firms have been the subject of much controversy in the last decade. During this period economies throughout the world have seen a steady increase of these types of firms as owners of companies. In Sweden this has certainly been the case and many argue that this trend will continue to grow stronger in the future. This trend is by many regarded as dangerous and as a threat to the ownership model that has characterized the Swedish economy for decades. Family ownership has been widely regarded as the most beneficial and responsible ownership model in Sweden.

The purpose of this study is to create an understanding for marketing directors? viewabout how event marketing effect the company?s brand equity in four separatebusinesses. Our question formulation the study aims to answer is:How does event marketing effect the brand equity in international companies?We have chosen to perform a qualitative study with a semi structured research interviewto find out how event marketing as a marketing method, can be applied from theperspective of a marketing director in relation to our theoretical reference frame.To create structure and increase the understanding of our thesis, we will describe thebasics in brand and sponsorship theory, which will fall in to the marketing method ofevent marketing. Further we will describe the brand equity model that we will latermodify for our purpose.

Previous research regarding the European debt crisis has mostly focused on the purely economic aspects of the crisis. However, there is a strong ?Protestant-Catholic? dimension in Europe, where historically Protestant countries are more prosperous than their Catholic and Orthodox counterparts. This has especially been a fact since early 2010, when several countries within the European Union had their credit ratings downgraded. Is this phenomenon merely a coincidence? Or could the roots of the recent troubles in Europe have a basis in historic religions? To tackle this question, Max Webers ?s 110 year old study The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism is brought back into light and used as a tool for analysis of the crisis.The results show that not only are Protestant countries in general more prosperous, but they also have lower corruption and their citizens have a higher level of trust towards the government.

 This thesis aims to through certain parts of the brand equity investigate the trust of consumers for a brand that recently experienced a product-harm crisis. It also wants to investigate why this trust exist, if it does. Structured interviews were carried out at 60 respondents in Uppsala. The results show that the respondents have positive associations with ICA, they think that ICA maintains a high quality on their products and services and that 50% more often choose to do their grocery shopping at ICA. The conclusion of the study is that ICA has a strong brand equity resulting in brand trust from consumers, which is founded in the brand reliability and brand intentions of the company. .

In the future the Swedish pension system will face major problems. With an increasing aging population combined with a decreasing share of working population the financing of the pension system is becoming a bigger problem than previously predicted. This means the individual himself will have a bigger responsibility to invest money for their future retirement. It has been shown that a large proportion of the people who invests for their future pension have neither the interest nor the time to actively invest their pension capital. To make it easier for those who invest for their retirement, some Swedish banks have created so-called generation funds.

Bankruptcy is a problem for the society in form of high costs for including suppliers, customers, employees, investors, banks, insurance companies etc. The purpose of this study is to confirm or dismiss a bankruptcy prediction model that has been developed in a previous Swedish study, in order to predict bankruptcy with help of specific key figures. The model has only been tested in a larger perspective where the population consisted of all small firms in Sweden, in this study the model´s reliability is tested by that it instead been applied to a minor perspective, where the population only includes Stockholm. With a quantitative approach of 12 different key figures from a total of 60 Swedish smaller registered companies in Stockholm between the years 2005-2007, has been studied. The companies are divided into two groups, companies with good financial health and companies that have ended up in bankruptcy.The results shows that the model is applicable in a smaller population, but some of the key figures do not generate essential or any type of information about bankruptcy, but the majority of the key figures in the model did.

High brand equity is a great asset for companies that operate their business in a free and competitive market. Brand equity can arise from both product-related and non-product related attributes and may be viewed from many different perspectives. This study examines which different attributes that contribute to enhance brand equity from customers point of view at the Swedish market for agricultural machinery. The study have been developed using a comprehensive literature search in order to investigate the field regarding brand equity and brand image. The literature review results in one product specific and one non-product specific approach in order to examine factors that contribute to enhanced brand equity. This takes the form as one survey-based approach regarding the non-product related attributes which is examined by interpreting the extra value added by different attributes.