Bakgrund: Många konkurrerande produkter liknar idag varandra och därför krävs ofta andra egenskaper än bra produkter för att övertala konsumenterna till köp. Ett sätt att förstärka associationskraften i ett varumärke kan vara att samarbeta med ytterligare ett varumärke. Detta kallas för co-branding och handlar om att man genom samarbete drar nytta av ett annat varumärke för att på så vis skapa fördelar som kan stärka det egna varumärket. Det tilläggsvärde som ett varumärke ger den märkta produkten betecknas av begreppet brand equity. Co- branding skulle kunna öka brand equity men det kan även innebära stora problem som skulle kunna minska brand equity.Syfte: Syftet med denna uppsats är att definiera och beskriva begreppet ?co- branding? ur ett svenskt marknadsperspektiv.

How debt affects companies is an issue that has received much attention. The fact that researchers disagree can make it hard for companies to choose a financingpolicy that maximizes the value of the firm and its return on equity. In a world with investors that are seeking to maximize profits the value of the firm can be affected differently by different economic conditions. The intention of this study is to answer these issues with quantitive methods, with focus on year 2010 and 2009, where the value of the firm is defined as P/E and P/B ratio. The outcome showed that liabilities only affected return on equity significant in one of four cases, and liabilites didn?t affect the value of companies significantly in any of these.

Problem-definition: How companies work with social media to strengthen their brand equity and what other purposes might lay behind this usage.Purpose: How Volkswagen Sweden use social media in order to strengthen their brand equity.Method: Qualitative case- study of Volkswagen Sweden where a number of respondents will be interviewed with the help of a semi structured interview guide.Theories: A number of theories in the field of brand equity and communication theory will be used in this paper, some of these theories are, Post-model, Social technographics ladder, brand equity and word of mouth.Empiric: A semi-structured interview guide will be shaped from theory and answered through interviews with people who have knowledge within the field.Conclusions: Extracted from the results the research members has identified a number of important factors that business should consider when they work with social media or planning to. They have also answered how business can strengthen their brand equity with social media..

Denna uppsats undersöker finansieringsformen equity crowdfunding där onoterade företag bjuder ut ägarandelar till den stora massan i utbyte mot kapital. Equity crowdfunding har funnits i Sverige sedan 2013 och ett flertal företag har sedan dess lyckats erhålla finansiering genom denna finansieringsform. Nystartade företag har i sin uppstartsfas många gånger problem med att införskaffa kapital vilket till exempel kan bero på brist på legitimitet, avsaknad av säkerheter eller att företagaren vill behålla full kontroll över företaget. I denna uppsats studeras equity crowdfunding på grund av att finansieringsformen tycks kunna erbjuda kapital till nystartade företag som ofta upplever nämnt problem. Equity crowdfunding öppnar dessutom upp för privatpersoner att enkelt kunna investera i onoterade företag.

This thesis studies whether private equity owned firms within the Swedish welfare sector distinguish themselves in terms of tax planning and short-termism from a control group consisting of other privately owned welfare firms. For the first time, the comparison is made on the entire welfare sector, between 14 matched pairs within education, health care and elderly care. We use financial metrics associated with tax planning and short-termism in sign tests to examine whether the private equity owned firms differ from our control group. The financial metrics tested are actual and paid tax rates, level of interest, book-tax gap, investments, personnel expenses per employee, and cash earnings. We find that the private equity owned firms in terms of tax planning only differ in the level of interest, while no notable differences are found in terms of short-termism..

Recent years have been very turbulent for most private equity firms. Especially the financial meltdown in global economy has affected the industry, but also the public pressure has made private equity houses change their control strategies towards more conventional methods used in public companies. This thesis aims to put light on the control methods used in listed private equity houses which use a buyout strategy. The paper describes how the control methods change over the different phases the asset experience and how different value generating strategies use altered control methods. Using Merchant's (2003) framework for management control systems and Berg and Gottschalg's (2004) research on value generating strategies in buyouts the thesis shows that action controls as designing instructions for the board and a business plan, together with goal alignment is the commonly used control strategy directly after the acquisition.

En av de allra centralaste aspekterna vid investerings- och finansieringsbeslut handlar om den risk som en investering innebär och den avkastning som marknaden kräver. Som kapitalplacerare vill man veta risken i en potentiell investering för att kunna beräkna det avkastningskrav man måste erhålla, och om investeringen motsvarar ens egen riskexponering. Investeringsbeslut på olika marknader innebär att olika typer av risker tas i beaktande och resulterar därigenom i att avkastningskraven skiljer sig åt mellan marknaderna. Området för den här undersökningen ligger i risker och avkastning på Private Equity marknaden där skillnader existerar jämfört med investeringar i börsbolag. Förespråkare för Private Equity industrin menar att Private Equity innebär möjligheter till betydligt högre avkastning än investeringar som görs i noterade instrument och då främst i jämförelse med aktier.

Background: The international accounting standard regarding goodwill gives opportunities to several accounting procedure choices, as goodwill is a complex, intangible asset. The valuation of goodwill affects equity/asset ratio and income statement, which gives that the stakeholders? impression of the group?s financial statement is affected by the valuation of this asset. It has been pointed out that difficult economic times bring impairment loss to the fore. During financial crisis, equity/asset ratio may be significant as the economy of the groups is expected to be strained.Purpose: The purpose of this essay is to explain the appearance of the possible relationship between a group?s impairment loss for goodwill and their equity/asset ratio, during financial straits.

Crowdfunding is a phenomenon that is subject to a great growth during the recent years, and the growth rate doesn't seem to stagnate. When new legislation named the JOBS Act in the U.S. becomes effective in late 2015, crowd equity will surely become a popular tool for financing businesses. Because crowdfunding great popularity is caused by the possibility to reach out to crowds through the internet, it is a global phenomenon, why it's relevant to examine current legislations in jurisdictions. This thesis covers an examination of Swedish laws of how they govern crowdfunding, and also suggestions on how the laws should be changed to more efficiently  correspond with the purposes of crowdfunding..

In this thesis we study the development of post-earnings announcement drift (PEAD) in the Swedish equity market from 2000 to 2009. By forming portfolios based on the stock price reaction to quarterly reporting we show that the characteristics of PEAD have changed. We demonstrate that negatively surprising companies show a positive drift during a holding period of six months sufficiently large to render the trading strategy unprofitable. This development holds from 2005 and onwards and these results contradict many a study which finds the same portfolio construction to be indeed profitable. We argue that this development is a trend that will not only affect our study but future studies as well..

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.

The essay deals with the subject about branding and the communicative process that entails between businesses and consumers. The purpose of this paper is to increase understanding of the opportunities and risks of brand building through sponsorship and Co-Branding. This descriptive analysis is made by highlighting the partnership between two strong brands in the Swedish market, Åbro & AIK, and how internal and external associations related to their impact on brand equity. The study has led to the conclusion that the sponsorship should be seen as synonymous with Co-branding, ie. a synergy between two or more brands.

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether there is a correlation between the actuarial assumptions, of listed groups in Large Cap on the Nasdaq Stockholm, equity ratio and their pensionplans funding status.Method: The study is based on a quantitative research method, where the analysis of annual reports takes place. The quantitative research method has enabled the paper to perform related analyzes and comparisons of means between groups, for listed companies equity ratio and pension obligation, and the relation to its actuarial assumptions. Correlation measurements are made using a non-parametric method, Spearman's rho, then further tested using one-sided hypotheses t-test.Theory: The backbone of the thesis is presented using two theories, earnings management and the principal-agent theory. These theories are intertwined with the previous researches, which also dealt with the essay topic of earnings management in previous years and in other countries.Empirical: Correlation analyzes between the studied actuarial assumptions and corporate groups solidity and pension financial status is presentedusing tables and charts. These are further analyzed using hypothesis tests and scatterplots.Conclusion: All tests resulted in very weak correlation between the different variables and can there for not be classified as significant.

This paper studies the option market?s implied dividend as a predictor of future equity market returns. We introduce this variable in the simple total return framework and discuss some complications of using it as a proxy for the expected dividend. We construct some regressions using the price-dividend ratio and the implied dividend growth, and test them on six years worth of data on the EURO STOXX 50-index. The main result is that implied dividend growth exhibits some forecastability over two-year horizons, but that the dataset is too short to draw any definitive conclusions about long-horizon forecastability.

Entrepreneurship is a subject of growing attention, especially within public policy, media and research. Many studies have been done, but the subject of entrepreneurial exit has to a large extent been ignored. The aim of this study has been to investigate how entrepreneurs at an early stage in their career think about exit within a near future, and what factors influence their attitude towards exit. The study was conducted through a survey answered by 253 entrepreneurs active within business incubators in Sweden. Based on previous research on entrepreneurial intentions, a model of exit intentions was developed, and tested against several other factors.