Over a long period of time, there has been a rich debate in the academic and financial world if active management can generate an excess return. Many experts say that the current active management strategies is nothing more than a money grab that produces large gains, for banks and investment firms, through high management fees while producing no excess value for the individuals buying their service. In short, an effective market makes it almost impossible for fund managers to produce value for their clients in the long run.No argument has only one side though, other experts say that active management has a role to play because not all investors are rational. This irrationality can lead to mispricing on financial assets in the marketplace and in turn lead to an ineffective market where active management can fill a much needed role. The purpose of this study is therefore to see if active management strategies can create a higher risk adjusted return, taking management fees into consideration, during times of high volatility when the uncertainty is at its peak.

This master thesis concerns whether Swedish non-financial listed firms act in accordance with the optimal capital structure theory and/or pecking order theory. The examined period is 1998-2004 and we discover that Swedish companies neither follow optimal capital structure theory nor pecking order theory. From our results we conclude that there exists no single point of the capital structure which is optimal. Rather it seems as if the optimal point lies in-between an interval from 0 to the industry average, where firms tend to be indifferent to their debt-ratios. Our results show that Swedish companies prefer internal financing followed by equity and as last choice debt issuance..

The purpose of this thesis is to investigate the status of Swedish real estate companies in terms of financial health and risk of financial distress. The background is the ongoing financial crisis, which partly can be derived from the American real estate sector. Publicly available accounting information from 16 listed real estate companies has been analyzed for a period of one year using Financial ratios covering both the operational and financial activities. We find that the deceleration in the economy and in the real estate sector have forced the real estate companies to make large write downs, in line with the relatively new accounting rules, IFRS. Write downs are likely to reoccur during the following periods and real estate companies will therefore probably be forced to continue to show negative results.

Prior research on the ability of Financial ratios to predict bankruptcies has shown a significant difference between the companies that went into bankruptcy and those that survived. This paper investigates whether there is a difference in the prediction ability of Financial ratios during the last financial crisis compared to relatively normal macroeconomic environments in which most previous studies have been conducted. We use univariate analysis to compare companies that went into bankruptcy during 2010 and 2011 with companies that remained active. Our dataset consists of 51 failed companies that are matched with 102 companies that remained active. All companies were Swedish limited companies with more than 50 employees and the comparison is made with 26 Financial ratios.

Common wisdom dictates that because payment of dividends decreases funds available for investment, a high payout ratio is to be associated with low earnings growth. This notion has been challenged in recent years by empirical research that has found a positive relationship between payout ratio and future earnings growth, both on the aggregated market level and the company level in different countries. This study investigated the aforementioned relationship on the Swedish market by statistically analyzing future earnings growth as a function of payout ratio on a large sample of publicly listed companies over the period 1980 to 2011. The results are in line with those found in previous research and indicate that companies with high dividend payout ratio tend to experience strong future earnings growth. The results are robust to the presence of mean reversion, the use of an alternative accounting measure of earnings, non-symmetrical earnings growth cycles and alternative practices for dealing with outliers..

Background: Previous studies focused on customer loyalty and customer satisfaction. But no studies focused on the interaction between the financial advisor and their client. Therefore we have chosen to focus on this knowledge gap.Purpose: The purpose of this thesis is to illustrate how the interaction between financial advisors and customers affect financial advisory in investment decision making.Method: The thesis philosophy was positivistic because patterns were found with help of a survey. Furthermore is the paper quantitative since the thesis is measurable and it try to explain the interaction between the financial advisors and the clients demographic characteristics and how it influence the financial advice Conclusion: The theories thin-slicing and similarity attraction paradigm may not apply to the interaction between financial advisor and client..

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.

The purpose of this Bachelor Thesis is to investigate whether the introduction of IFRS, and in particular IAS 40 regarding fair value accounting of investment property, has lead to increased financial risk for Swedish real estate companies. Financial risk is measured using several financial risk ratios during the period 2000-2009, effectively covering the period before and after the introduction in 2005. The financial risk is found to actually have decreased significantly in comparison with the control group. The relative decrease supports the notion of a factor unique to the real estate companies at least partially driving the change, possibly IAS 40. However, this change is, due to the statistic method employed, only an indication of the direction of change, and consequently interpretations of the magnitude of change cannot be made.

During some time there has been a debate whether or not logging contractors? profitability can be considered poor. The contractors? situation is important for maintaining long term relationships and continuity in the forest industry. A thorough analytic picture is however missing.

Title: Valuing Real Estate FCFE and interest coverage under macroeconomic uncertainty with scenario analysisAuthors: Marcus Ewerstrand, Jakob MattssonAdvisor: Gert SandahlBackground and problem: After the collapse in the Swedish economy in the beginning of the 1990-ties, the company Secerum was launched. Securums objective was to handle unsecured credits from Nordbanken by transferring a large portfolio of properties and to setup a number of companies who would be in charge for the prospects of these assets. One company that was established during this remarkable period was Castellum, in the year of 1994. After a successful process of raising capital to its development of corporate strategies and formation of several affiliated companies which operates locally, Castellum was publish on the Stockholm stock exchange 1997/1998. Now, thirteen years later after its establishment, the credit crunch in the US.

The initial provisions concerning CFC-legislation were introduced 1990 and has since been subject to several revisions and adaptations. The fundamental purpose of the CFC-legislation is to prohibit and prevent tax evasion undertaken by such companies that own other foreign companies where generated income is subject to low rates of taxation. The CFC-legislation aims to provide the Swedish government with an op-portunity to tax this income. This is important in order to prevent tax avoidance and preserve the integrity of the system of taxation within Sweden. In order for the CFC-legislation to be as effective as possible there must exist a clear way of defining which activity that is to be regulated within its scope.

This master thesis was a subtask of a project called EMIR-1. The goal with the thesis was tobuild a system for particulate mass measurements in one of the engine test cells at KTH. Theparticulate mass measurements are planned to be measured with a TEOM.The exhaust gases must first be diluted with air before the sample is sent to the TEOM.Therefore an ejector diluter for this matter also was designed and evaluated in the thesis.Emissions measurements have been done both with and without dilution to determine thedilution ratio. Tests have been done for different speeds and loads.Problems with stability of the dilution ratio have been an issue throughout the process andpressure pulsations in the exhaust pipe are believed to be the cause. More tests have to be done tomake sure that this is the problem.One idea is to make the inner diameter of the diluter nozzle smaller and see if it changes thedilution ratio stability.

The initial provisions concerning CFC-legislation were introduced 1990 and has since been subject to several revisions and adaptations. The fundamental purpose of the CFC-legislation is to prohibit and prevent tax evasion undertaken by such companies that own other foreign companies where generated income is subject to low rates of taxation. The CFC-legislation aims to provide the Swedish government with an op-portunity to tax this income. This is important in order to prevent tax avoidance and preserve the integrity of the system of taxation within Sweden. In order for the CFC-legislation to be as effective as possible there must exist a clear way of defining which activity that is to be regulated within its scope.

Background: 2009 it has occurred a crisis in some of the member states of the European Union: Spain, Portugal, Italy, Ireland and Greece. Despite, some major banks in the world had begun to recover from the financial crisis that occurred from 2007 until 2009, there were still banks who found it difficult to survive. Greece is one of the countries that suffered from the financial crisis. The high budget deficit and the unsustainable debt are underlying the crisis.Banks as financial intermediaries have important function in a nation?s economy.

Environment friendly transports are one of the main topics in the industry and society today.Shell organizes an annual university competition called Shell Eco Marathon. The goal is to buildthe car that consumes the least fuel during a race. KTH participated for the first time in 2006.The engine for this competition, DoubleTwo, has been developed within the school. Theprinciple is a two stroke counter piston HCCI engine with variable compression ratio. HCCIstands for homogenous charge compression ignition.