Title: Management control of facility efficiency in municipalities - A case study of Halmstad municipalityLevel: BachelorSeminar date: 2012-05-31Authors: Markus Nilsson & Sara MattssonAdvisor: Sven-Ola CarlssonKey words: Control management in municipality, facility efficiency, management by objectives, internal rents and incentivesBackground: The public sector owns and manages a large property portfolio and in the municipalities, the properties are always a big cost item. Because of the outside world changes and the public interest, the properties should be used as efficiently as possible.Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to describe how control management of facilities looks like a municipality. The paper also seeks to explain how employees work to make the facilities more efficient in a municipality.Methodology: The authors use a qualitative method with open interviews.Theoretical perspectives: The choice of theory was made with the field of management control and facility efficiency in mind. The theory therefore includes management by objectives, internal rents and reward systems, motivation and communication within organizations.Empirical foundation: The organization has undergone a reorganization 2010/2011. There are no clear incentives to reduce facility costs.

This study is about the child?s perspective when it comes to work with financial assistance. The purpose of the study was partly to describe how social workers regard the child?s perspective in their work with financial assistance and partly to look into whether they impose a child?s perspective in their practical work. To fulfill this purpose the authors used a quantitative method and sent out a web based survey to all the social workers actively working with financial assistance in Stockholm town.

According to the current regulations described in IAS 27 - Consolidated and Separate Financial Statements, an investment company is required to consolidate all entities that it controls. However, this thesis outlines the creation of a new system, where those entities are instead measured at fair value, taking changes in fair value into account in the income statement. By recalculating the consolidated accounts for five major investment companies in accordance with the new system, this investigation concludes that the new system would provide investors with more relevant but less reliable accounting information. In addition, the historical financial performance of Investor, Industrivärden, Ratos, Kinnevik, and Lundbergföretagen, is evaluated using their recalculated consolidated financial statements. The evaluation indicates that the overall volatility in the companies' consolidated financial statements would have been higher during the time period 2005-2009, in comparison to official reports..

Year 1996 a new law was introduced in Sweden, the law of corporate restructuring, what purpose was to help companies in financial distress. Now, nine years later the procedure hasn?t been successful. This is what this thesis is trying to find out.This thesis main question is: What distinguishes the companies that have filed for a corporate restructuring, according to the financial position?The purpose of this thesis is to find out if key ratios can be used to distinguish the companies that filed for corporate restructuring.

This paper investigates how Swedish upper secondary school students relate to the financial support available from the Swedish state of education. It also looks at the attitudes of such students to the new CSN[1]truancy rules as they apply to school politics.Is there a difference in students? attitude to these truancy rules and does that difference depend on the students? socio-economic standard, whether they come from a wealthy background or a marginalised society or whether they are ethnic Swedish? Does this in any way affect the attitudes of the students?This financial support is only paid to those students who do not skip school. If they lose their right to this contribution because of truancy, their parents will also forfeit the right to the financial subsidies to which they may be entitled. Naturally, this may affect students in different ways, depending on what kind of financial situation their family is in.Do some students go to school out of their own financial interest or out of that of their parents? Through focus-group interviews, students have expressed their opinions, told about their experiences and stated their attitudes with regards to these matters.

The purpose of this study was to inquire how social workers perceive and describe financial abuse of older persons. Six qualitative interviews were carried out and the assembled data was then categorized and analyzed using a theory considering exercise of power and ageism as a theoretical frame. Previous research has shown that at least 10% of older persons have been exposed to some form of abuse or violence; however, there is a lack of research carried out in a Swedish context regarding financial abuse specifically. The six persons interviewed in this study all presented financial abuse as some kind of violence and as previous research has shown the study suggests that this is an increasing problem. Further research ought to be carried out to increase the awareness of this particular form of abuse and to facilitate discovery and development of measures to prevent financial abuse of older persons.

Purpose: To investigate if Altman´s Z´-score model, which calculates financial distress, can be applied on companies established in Sweden and if the financial crisis in 2008 made previously healthy companies go bankrupt.Methodology: Quantitative studies with a positivistic foundation. Empirical data will be collected in order to examine if there is generalizability among the studied objects. Conclusions will be made by comparing the empirical data with the theoretical foundation. Financial distress in firms will be measured.Theoretical perspectives: Altman´s Z´-score model, designed to predict financial distress in private firms.Empirical foundation: A selection of 93 private firms that have gone bankrupt in the years 2008, 2009 or 2010. The firms selected all have a turnover that exceeds 20 million SEK.

This paper analyses how Swedish fine-art oil paintings sold at auctions has performed as a monetary investment during the period autumn 1985 until spring 2006. An average price technique as well as a hedonic regression technique, applied to a sample of 19 213 auction sales, is used to construct price indices. The indices show somewhat different results, which is explained by the inability of the average price model to adjust for relative differences in quality between periods. The hedonic regression model on the other hand captures this effect, why the hedonic index is applied in a financial return model. By adjusting for transaction cost, the financial return of an average investment in paintings is calculated.

Municipalities must establish budget annually but they are free to decide how the governance should be designed, this can lead to lack of consistency and measurability within and between municipalities. The purpose of this thesis was to present a proposal for a unified and more measurable financial structure of a municipality where this was lacking. In our theory we describe the issues of traditional management control and we introduce an alternative control with non-financial ratios included, called the Balanced Scorecard. In the empirical data it is investigated how the governance of a municipality could be designed, according to the respondents. In the analysis the information gathered to reach the answers to what are considered to be useful governance in municipality, are examined. In the conclusion, we design Balanced Scorecards with both financial and non-financial ratios to the councils of the municipality..

The Swedish bank Handelsbanken has, according to their own way of measuring, been more successful than a weighted average of their competitors during the last 38 years. They have also handled the recent financial crisis, as well as the one in the 1990´s, better than most other banks. This paper studies their management control system at branch level in order to identify the controls which have been enforced to ensure that a low risk level is retained in the lending. The controls that have been identified are; (1) A decentralized organization with the offices as profit centers where the manager has restrictions regarding risk level and the results are measured as K/I (cost/revenue). (2) The absence of bonuses and individual follow-up regarding performance measurement.

Title: Nordea Life and Pension during financial crisis Subject: Business administration, Candidate thesis 15 p. Authors: Seyithan Öngörur och Adnan Yari Instructor: Peter Lindberg Date: 2010-01-13 Key words: Nordea, the financial crisis, advice, marketing, customer relationship Purpose: The purpose of the study is to provide an understanding of how the financial crisis has affected Nordea Life and Pensions market growth based on market share. We also want to give an understanding of what factors may be responsible for the outcome that it may be helpful in future financial crises. Method: A qualitative study was the basis for the study, where three interviews were carried out by the respondents from Nordea Life and Pension.  Theory: In this section we have focused on relevant theory and has divided them into different themes, advice, current legislation, marketing, consumption and buying behavior. Conclusion: The study shows that Nordea Life and Pension had a positive growth during the financial crisis and a number of factors are presented that may be the basis for the outcome.Proposal for further research: Since this study was limited to one company it may be intresting to investigate and examine the consuling industry market as a whole affected by the financial crisis. Contributions: This paper has provided an understanding of how Nordea Life and Pensions affected during a financial crisis, based on market share and the factors that may have been the basis for this..

In a business environment where the stakeholder perspective is evolving and sustainable development is receiving increased attention, it is of importance for companies to adjust. The demand and pressure is exerted from several stakeholders who force companies to take action and live up to the expectations because if failing to do so, negative consequences will most likely be the case. The attention of this study is on ABB Power Products (ABB PP) and their environment and working environment risk management. The aim of this thesis is to identify and describe how perceived environmental risks are managed and what the incentives are to work proactively to minimize the risks. The incentives for a proactive risk management strategy are researched through both a strategic and operational perspective.

Since January 1st 2005 all companies listed on a regulated stock exchange within the European Union are required to present their financial reports in accordance with International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS). The intention of the introduction of IFRS is to achieve international harmonization of accounting rules in order to make financial reports more comparable between companies from different countries. The purpose of financial reports presented in accordance with IFRS is to provide information that is useful to the users of the information. The aim of this paper is to investigate whether the information regarding goodwill and the goodwill impairment test, presented in accordance with IFRS, in fact is useful to a specific group of accounting information users, namely equity analysts. An empirical study is conducted, based on interviews with seven Swedish equity analysts.

AbstractTitle: Level/Degree/Grade:Authors:Supervisor:Research question:Purpose:How the bank may improve its financial counselling ? A qualitative case study.Bachelor Thesis; Business administration; Corporate finance.Andreas A?strand, Anton Persson, Kristoffer Wedebrand.Hans Mo?rner.How may the bank improve its financial counselling to private investors using portfolio theory?Our purpose is to examine the advice, with basis in portfolio theory, the bank?s financial advisors provide to their clients, the investors, and how they can improve. If we can identify and point out areas of improvement in the financial counselling, we hope to raise the question and contribute with an improved financial counselling. Another positive effect we are hoping for is to improve the situation for the investors whereas all parties benefit from an improved portfolio selection.This study is conducted through a qualitative case study, where we used a deductive approach and collected our data through personal interviews.The conclusion that emerges is that the financial counselling could potentially be improved if financial advisors improve their knowledge in portfolio theory.The originality shapes through the opportunity to investigate a specific bank and because of that an opportunity to examine a specific case more thoroughly was created. Our thesis contributes with opening La?nsfo?rsa?kringar?s and other banks? eyes to how their financial counselling could be improved through new knowledge in portfolio theory.

The purpose of this report is to examine what will happen with the financial control of a company if changes from a family owned company to a public company listed on a stock market. The expectations were that the control would have a more short-term focus with more financial measures. The result shows that the changes were experienced as minor. The rate and the work in the finance department showed to be the major changes due to the change of owners..