Since 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) and International Accounting Standards (IAS). The purposes of these standards are to accomplish international harmonization of accounting rules to make financial reports more comparable. However, recent research has shown that some firms tend to use goodwill strategically in a business combination by manipulating the acquired assets and consciously allocate the intangible assets to goodwill to reduce the depreciation in the income and decrease costs. This phenomenon may reduce the comparability between financial reports and thus has an opposite effect on the purpose of IFRS and IAS.The aim of this study is to show how the companies involved in this study allocate goodwill strategically. Furthermore, the introduction of the new standards has contributed to that goodwill now is a subject for impairment test, therefore we want to show whether this affected the comparability of the companies in this study.An empirical study was conducted, based on interviews with four Swedish managers.

Background: During the year 2002 approximately 27 000 people lost their jobs because of companies filing for bancruptcy. In 2002 the number of companies filing for bancruptcy in Sweden were 6740. This is approximately twice as many as in the year of 1974 when the first major study concerning bancruptcies in Sweden was carried out. The accumulated amount of unpaid bancruptcy claims for the period 1991 ? 1997 was 51 billion SEK.

In efforts to strengthen local economies, business development programs are often a way in which governmental organizations and state affiliates try to facilitate innovation and successful entrepreneurship. There is a mutual interest from both the public and private sector that these funds are put to good use. Extensive research has been conducted with the focus of the general effect of public support programs. However, not much research has been done on what external factors affect the situation for receiving businesses. This study attempts to examine whether one specific such factor, the level of maturity on the markets that the recipients operate in, has a discernible effect on the needs for different types of entrepreneurial support.

The automotive industry is today in a world of globalisation and external factors can influence the car companies and it is important that they progress with the people. When an external factor, as the oil price, increases dramatically, it will affect the economies in different matters. Other external factors are impacted by the oil price, for example inflation, unemployment and target rates. In addition, people are changing their preferences due to the attention of the environment. With this as the foundation the problem of the essay were divided into three aspects.

It is easy to see that oil has a big part in our economy, by looking at the repeated news from the media and at the stock market, where they follow the oil price very closely. Behavioral finance is about investors making small or big mistakes in the stock market. Behavioral finance describes the importance of understanding your own faults, as well as others investor?s faults. Behavioral finance emphases the importance of not assuming that the financial market is a flawless environment, but to understand the psychology behind investment decisions.

This study examines the connection between Sweden`s crime rate and financial aid, focusing on the effects of social spending on different types of criminal activity in the Swedish municipalities between 2000 and 2022. Using theories such as social support theory and utility maximization, the study investigates the relationship between economic assistance and crimes like theft, attempted murder, drug offenses, and assault. The results suggest a complicated relationship: financial aid is associated with a rise in drug offenses and assaults but a decrease in larceny and robberies, when controlling for all observed and unobserved time invariant factors in the municipal factors (a fixed effects panel data model). However, when we test our model for robustness, the effects disappear meaning that other factors that are time varying in the municipality are biasing our estimates. Examples for this may be factors like peer pressure, substance addiction, and socioeconomic conditions that have a considerable impact on criminal conduct, financial aid alone may not be adequate to curb crime.

This essay examines the process of fair value accounting of financial assets in a Swedish commercial bank, in contrast to the theoretical approach stated by IASB. The theoretical background contains a review of the academic standpoint on fair value accounting and historical cost accounting, a detailed description of fair value accounting according to current and future IASB regulation and on the American FAS 157 regulation. The empirical case study describes the process of valuing and classifying financial assets into level 1 and level 2 of the fair value hierarchy. The analysis describes how the legal requirements for classification are interpreted and applied in practice when valuing bonds and derivatives. The authors provide an explanation as to why the majority of financial assets are valued mark to model rather than mark to market as well as a suggestion on how the share of market valued assets can be increased..

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.

Two of Swedens´s major banks, SEB and Handelsbanken, which appears in the same industry and have similar strategy. Both banks can achieve a similar result despite the fact that their reward system looks quite different. An issue that arises from this observation is the relative reward system to the rest of the economy control system.Our purpose of this paper is therefore to examine the reward system in the organization's financial management systems. We wonder if the reward system may be a function of economic control system, or part of the system, or perhaps made independent of the system and then gradually adapted?In our study, we choose to assume a reward system has three functions to manage, motivate and compose the employee group.

In non-profit organizations, surplus of the organization goes back to the organization's members. We have noted that Hyresgästföreningen initiated a change in 2005 when the organization merged its local membership registries to a national registry. There are few studies explaining how non-profit organizations are using management in an organizational change. What happens with the business management at an organizational change that is similar to the change in Hyresgästföreningen? The aim of this thesis is to explore how the governance of a nonprofit organization is changing at an organizational change.

The financial sector is an important part of the infrastructure. As a consequence of deregulations on the financial market, several new actors have entered the market. This has made it even more important for banks to identify the factors that are decisive when customers chose a bank. The purpose of this thesis was to clarify which factors that are decisive to students choice of bank. A survey was performed among students at Luleå University of Technology.

Den hårdnande konkurrensen på dagens marknader, har medfört att företagen insett betydelsen av personalens beteende och dess avgörande inverkan på verksamhetens effektivitet. För att företag ska kunna hävda sig i den hårda rivaliteten om marknadens kunder krävs en medveten samordning av resurser och handlingar mot bestämda mål. Ett styrmedel som kan användas för att skapa samstämmighet mellan ett företags mål och de anställdas handlingar är belöningssystem. Belöningssystemets uppgift är främst att motivera personalen att utföra sina arbetsuppgifter effektivt men även behålla nyckelpersoner kvar i företaget. Att utforma ett effektivt belöningssystem kan av företagsledningar betraktas som en komplicerad och tidskrävande uppgift.

Background: Many different parties in the society are affected by the financial information delivered by the companies. Therefore, different interests want their ideas to have an impact on the accountning standards. The construction of the accounting standards are illustrated as a pure political process, where lobbying and conflicts of interest are determining factors. Purpose: The purpose is to understand the underlying interests behind regulation of financial accounting in Sweden and how these interests are manifestated in the establishment of accounting standards. Method: The thesis is designed as a casestudy of the regulation process which induced the legislation of the Årsredovisningslagen 6 kap 1 § 3st.

This study finds that the Swedish Government has a process for purchasing financial advisory services that is more transaction-oriented than the corresponding process at a Swedish private equity firm. The conclusion is supported by previous research comparing public and private sector purchasing processes. However, the differences between the two purchasing processes are not as significant as one might believe given the fact that the Government, unlike the private equity firm, has to operate under the Public Procurement Act (LOU). The tendency of the Swedish Government to apply a more relationoriented purchasing approach than expected is most likely driven by the fact that this represents the established professional norm for purchasing of professional services in the private sector. As LOU and the professional norm impose contradictory influences on the Swedish Government?s purchasing of financial advisory services, the final outcome depends on which of the two forces that dominate..

The subject for this paper is the Class Action against Skandia Association, a civil organization formed in 2003 with the aim of claiming compensation for some 1.2 million life insurance customers. The background to its formation was one of the largest financial scandals in Sweden in recent times, involving a number of questionable affairs within the insurance corporation Skandia and its subsidiaries, most notably the life insurance company Skandia Liv. The interests of both the stake- and stockholders of the company seem, in certain ways, to have been grossly misrepresented. The scandal, as well as the reaction it spawned, pose a number of questions. In this study, we focus on two: a possible, and in many ways apparent crisis in the representation of interests in Swedish society, and the role of civil society in upholding the balance between these interests.We argue that what is often held to be the ?greed? or ?immorality? of individuals in scandals such as Skandia is, to a great extent, a mere reflection of the ?rational? underpinnings of modern-day capitalism.We find that trust has been a key mechanism of control in the relationships between consumers and agents in pension and life insurance markets, and that ?the Swedish model? that distinguished post-WWII Swedish society was a model heavily based on trust towards existing models of bureaucratic governance.