On Nasdaq OMX Nordic Stockholm there has been a large increase in issues of preferred stocks since the financial crisis 2008. Aiming to explain whether preferred stocks have most of their characteristics relating to debt or equity, we answer four sub questions. Do all preferred stocks share the same features, or do they differ from each other? Our population is similar in characteristics, except for the preferred stock of Swedbank which is convertible and deviates when it comes to participation in dividends - instead of convertible the others are limited and redeemable. Further, the second sub question treats preferred stock in relation to the common stock quantitatively, in market data.

Background: In the current labor and business policy debate in Sweden there is a major focus on the need for it to become easier to set up small firms, and that it needs to become easier for small firms to hire staff. In order to set up and run a business, funding is required. Firms can choose to work more or less actively with this issue, but they all need to relate to it. There are basically two ways to fund a business, either through equity or through debt. The ratio between these two sources is called the firm?s capital structure.Purpose: To chart the capital structure of small firms in Sweden.

The purpose of this essay is to examine and compare the news covering of Swedens three biggest cities (the metropolitan areas) and their surrounding areas with the covering of the rest of the country (the provincial areas) in two daily national newspapers, Aftonbladet and Dagens Nyheter. The aim has been to answer the following questions:- What amount of the news coverage in Aftonbladet and Dagens Nyheter concern the metropolitan areas compared to the provincial areas, and how do these two newspapers differ in the news covering of these areas?- Is there a difference in the news articles size and content, depending on weather they concern the metropolitan or the provincial areas?- How has the balance between news concerning metropolitan and provincial areas changed over the recent 20 years?The theories used in this study are News values, the media commercialization and Popular Journalism, and The Agenda Setting Theory. The method that has been used is a Quantitative Content Analysis.Despite the essays hypothesis, that the news coverage in the two newspapers would be dominated by material from the metropolitan areas, the result showed that a majority of the examined articles concern the provincial areas. It also showed that Aftonbladet has a bigger percentage of provincial news than Dagens Nyheter.

This report covers the thesis done by mechanical engineering at the engineering program at the University of Halmstad. Student Work Development of packaging in the food industry includes 15 credits and has performed over 20 weeks in spring 2009. The thesis work is a compulsory part of education and aimed at the student must apply the knowledge it has given during training in a project related to reality. Student work has been carried out in cooperation with Hanson & Möhringen AB and the project's main objective was to develop an environmentally friendly packaging to their brand Falk Salt. When salt is one of the world's cheapest commodity was packing all the costs have to be as low as possible.

This report is focusing upon relining from a client?s point of view. Potential buyers are given a presentation of the different methods available today together with a general briefing describing the process. An important part of this report are the interviews that took place with already established customers. Property owners, managers, pipe cleaners, and project managers whom all been in contact with relining have answered the questions given along with their own thoughts and have also given recommendations of other persons to talk to.

The majority of all power cuts that affects individuals and communities are caused by earth faults on the power transmission lines at 10kV and 20kV level [1]. If these power cuts could be eliminated, less disturbances and interrupts would lead to large amounts of money savings.Swedish Neutral has developed such a protection system. When an earth fault occurs power is injected into the neutral point of the transformer. The RCC (Residual Current Compensation) protection calculates a compensation current exactly 180 degrees out of phase to the fault current. Doing this, the voltage at the fault location becomes very close to zero, without affecting the power transmission.The protection system can only compensate automatically for the fundamental frequency (50Hz), and manually for the 3rd, 5th, 7th and 9th harmonics.

This thesis describes the processes of establishing wind farms in Sweden. The workcontains a thorough literature review regarding both the establishing process andproject management, including complex project theory. The main part consists of theexecution of 15 interviews with organizations involved in wind farm establishment.The result of these interviews laid the foundation for a process description identifyingdifferent steps and activities in these types of projects. The outcome was thencompiled in a project model, which includes five phases and four processes.When analyzing the project of establishing wind farms from the theory of complexprojects one discovers that the amount of different requirements and stakeholdersnecessitates a systematical and dynamical project structure. Since projects are in needof different types of competences there are also many consultants and contractorsinvolved.

In a sustainable society the use of renewable energy and recycling of materials is of high importance. Wastewater treatment plants use large amounts of energy in the processing of wastewater. This study seeks to evaluate wastewater as an energy resource and to examine treatment plants potential to become sustainable energy producers. The study is based upon the internal processes of Himmerfja?rdsverket.

The number of elderly people has been steadily rising in Sweden for a long time and as a proportion of the population, the increase has been even greater. The population structure in the country means that in the not too distant future, there will be a sharp rise in demand for care and elderly accommodation.A tighter credit market as a consequence of new rules and regulations with a stricter capital and liquidity requirements combined with market turbulence, has made financing property developement more difficult and more expensive which has resulted in many companies using alternative sources of finance.DEmand for safe investments with low risk is high as the market is volatile and banks, pension funds, fund management and life insurance companies are looking for investments outside the stock market that can deliver a safe return in the longer term. There has also been a debate about whether institutional investors as the AP pension funds really should own properties directly.As properties for care and elderly accommodation are definable assets with predictable payment flows, long leases and often a local authority as tenant that would not risk cancelling payments, these would be highly appropriate for securitisation, i.e. to issue bonds or other tradable securities based on the cash flows from the assets.In other words, the securitisation of rent flows would offer the opportunity to create an attractive investment product of the type being demanded, well suited to institutional investor requirements, while at the same time, it can provide an attractive financing opportunity to meet the need for more care and elderly accommodation..

This essay is about how the company management should prepare to avoid BOHICA syndrome to develop from a reorganisation. BOHICA syndrome is a cynical attitude, acquired by recurrent disappointments from, for example reorganisations. If the company management is attentive and identifies and addresses such disappointments, BOHICA syndrome can prohibit the possibilities in future to work efficiently and profitably in the company. BOHICA syndrome are thus by extension a threat to the company?s survival.

Det finns stora besparingsmöjligheter i byggbranschen genom effektivare kommunikation och planering. Examensarbetet har genomförts på tre av Q-gruppens byggarbetsplatser i Stockholmsområdet. En ombyggnation/ nyproduktion av lägenheter och lokaler i Saltsjöbaden, en nyproduktion av lägenheter och förskola på Södermalm samt en ombyggnation av lokaler i Folksamhuset på Södermalm. Kvalitativa intervjuer, deltagande observationer och en omarbetning av en befintlig Gantt tidplan till en LoB (Line of Balance) tidplan visar hur situationen med kommunikation och planering i byggbranschen upplevs av platsledning och yrkesarbetare samt hur det kan förbättras.Examensarbetet omfattar två delar där kommunikation mellan platsledning och yrkesarbetare på byggarbetsplatsen är den ena och användning av LoB planering är den andra.Examensarbetet visar att de som arbetar i produktionen gärna ser en kombination av planeringsmetoderna Gantt och LoB. Samtliga intervjuade är överens om att en väl fungerande kommunikation och planering är väsentligt för att projekt ska fortlöpa smidigt.

The purpose of this master?s thesis is to investigate children?s access to specific children?s activities at Swedish public libraries 2005. The thesis is based on literature studies and qualitative interviews with children?s librarians, library directors and local politicians at two demographically different libraries in Gothenburg.The sub questions are: What measures exist to promote children?s access to public libraries and children?s activities when it comes to: law and other political statements: different efforts on the state level and different efforts on the municipal level in the direct activity with children at public libraries? What driving forces and needs justify activities for children at public libraries? How will the responsible persons judge that the efforts are sufficient? The result of the study shows that children?s access to library activity has increased in the last couple of years due to reorganization, economic savings with closing down of library affiliates and because libraries have given priority to other things, like IT and new media. Children?s librarians have got new assignments and less time for children?s activity.The conclusion of our investigation is that children?s librarians are ambitious in their work, but unfortunately don?t give children?s library activity adequate resources.

In this paper the authors are trying to understand what separates men from women when they save and invest their money. But also what factors that influence them in their decisions. To investigate how men and women actually act when investing their money the authors construct a survey. The authors also turn to the Swedish banks for information on how they think there customers are behaving. The authors find that men are more risk- taking than women and therefore invest more in products with higher risk, for example shares.

In Sweden, a big part of the energy use is used in the housing sector. Political goals and targets are set up which the housing sector needs to work towards. Apartment buildings are a major part of the housing sector in Sweden and therefore reduction of energy use in these kinds of buildings are key to lower the energy use in Sweden. But there are not only political incentives to reduce the energy use. Some energy?saving measures are directly profitable and should thus be performed.

Today's unsustainable resource use is influenced by many factors. One key factor isproduction methods and patterns. Trough change of production patterns enterprises can bepart of the solution to a more sustainable society. This case study has analyzed environmentalperformance of the printer company Edita Västra Aros Ltd (EVA), who has gained awards forits environmental work, and what driving forces they have had during this work. The survey isbased on a qualitative method and the collected data consists of documents and staffinterviews, which have been analyzed with content analysis.