The report is a result of a bachelor thesis at the department of business administration, School of Business, Economics and Law, Gothenburg University, spring term 2008. The study examines the potential return of Swedish Venture Capital firms? Cleantech investments, carried out in 2006 and 2007, compared to the return on their other investments.The study has identified a number of factors affecting the return. These have been classified within three areas: the characteristics of the Venture Capital investment, the characteristics of the Venture Capital firm and the market potential for Cleantech. The impacts on potential return for these factors are investigated by means of an interview survey with 18 Swedish Venture Capital firm covering 45 investments in Cleantech.Our research indicates a worse potential return on Cleantech investments compared to other investments.

The aim of this paper is to examine venture capital in football player contracts in Sweden. This is a phenomena that have existed in Sweden since 1999 when the company Djurgården fotboll AB was founded, since then eight other companies have been started. These companies form an alliance with a football club and invest in player contracts. These contracts have high risk since it is valued by the performance of the contracted player. The venture capital firms have no formal control over their investments and they are showing negative results.

Analysts at Venture Capital firms of today experience troubles when they try to explicate the intrinsic value, which they see in their investments. The traditional valuation models do not account the value of flexibility and analysts have to Through studies at a Venture Capital firm in Sweden, I have analyzed if Real Option analysis could help them to explicate the intrinsic value that they see.With the help from a decision tree, analysts can identify the hidden option values embedded in the investment. I find that real options can be a helpful tool for Venture Capital companiesto clarify the intrinsic values that they see in their investments. Real option analysis is however not a competitor to traditional value methods, it is rather a compliment..

The purpose of this study was to investigate youth?s experiences of what meaning the nonprofit youth project Husby Marathon had on their social capital and self-identity. In order to answer the purpose a qualitative methodology was used based on interviews with four of the participant youths. Two teories were used, Social capital by Robert D. Putnam and Selfidentity by Anthony Giddens.

This thesis examines the relationship between OECD-DAC and Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) within an aid efficiency context. The ability for these two actors to cooperate is highly important and determines the outcome for a major part of the development aid in the new millennium. The development agenda for the new millennium emphasizes aid efficiency as a key to a more successful aid, and this requires increased cooperation between all actors. The analysis made is a discourse analysis. The discourse of aid efficiency is analyzed, both its preconditions and results.The analyze finds out that there is a gap between OECD-DAC and CSOs in terms of how to handle aid efficiency.

This thesis project has focused on studying ÅF?s business concept Energy Collaboration, which is their way of selling energy efficiency services. Thereforeongoing projects have been analyzed. The purpose was to determine achieved energy efficiency, costs and profitability for the studied projects. It was concluded that the Energy Collaboration is a good way of selling energy efficiency services, since the customer takes no risk and energy savings of about 15-25 % can be achieved with simple measures.

To measure losses in a transformer with today?s methods is either slow or insecure. There s a new method developed by Alstom that hasn't been actualize in to a test-system and that has been the assignment in this project. The idea is built on a switched system and a CLR- circuit in the resonant frequency. The test-system has a calculated power-loss that make the efficiency to be as high as 99,8% and in reality over 95%.

Increased competition in the IT industry has sparked a need for developing faster innovation processes with more predictable output. One of the biggest issues when it comes to achieving a faster flow through the innovation process lies in managing its high degree of variation. Proposing a solution to this problem, Lean Software Development (LSD), was developed to provide a framework for how IT companies should organize its software development process to achieve increased speed and quality. This study examines to which extent LSD, as a set of values, principles, methods and tools, can be used to improve flow efficiency in the innovation process. A case study of a multinational IT company was made by conducting ten semi-structured interviews with current employees.

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..

Background: During extreme market conditions like the period during fall 2008 the discussion of what affects company value becomes apparent. The capital structure is the relation between borrowed capital and equity in a company´s financing mix. What impact changes in capital structure have on company value is a widely debated subject within the theory of finance. If a relationship between capital structure and company value exists the implication is that an optimal capital structure where company value is maximized also exists.Aim: The aim of the thesis is to study whether a certain relationship between capital structure and company value exists among selected stocks and companies listed on Stockholmsbörsens OMXS30.Implementation: With aim to fulfill the purpose of the thesis regression analysis has been performed among chosen stocks and companies. The empirical results eventuating from this have been analyzed from the view of elected relevant theory.Completion and results: We find that during normal market conditions a positive relationship between debt ratio and enterprise value (EV) can be established.

Frågeställningar: Hur använder svenska multinationella företag expatriering? Hur fungerar expertskatten i förhållande till dess syfte? Vilka konsekvenser medför användandet eller icke-användandet av expertskatten för företagen?Syfte: Syftet är att undersöka hur svenska multinationella företag använder sig av expatriering som kompetensförsörjning och i det perspektivet utreda huruvida expertskatten fungerar i förhållande till dess syfte.Metod: En tvärsnittsundersökning genomfördes vid insamling av det empiriska materialet. Primärdata samlades in med hjälp av intervjuer från tre undersökningsföretag. Viss kompletterande sekundärdata har även bidragit till undersökningen.Slutsatser: Vid de tillfällen då företagen inte kan tillgodose sitt kärnkompetensbehov på en lokal marknad är expatriering en metod att tillgå. Expatriering leder då till en kunskapsförflyttning över de nationella gränserna.

Over-investors ? a study of advanced language pupils in the upper secondary school.  The thesis examines the advanced study of Modern Foreign Languages (MFL) from a sociological point of view, inspired by Bourdieu.  Founded in official statistics and a specially designed survey its main findings can be said to be that it is mainly pupils with a high amount of acquired educational capital from higher social backgrounds who avail themselves of this opportunity, predominantly girls. The amount of inherited language and transnational capital in the family seems to be of particular importance for the pupils? choice of advanced language studies. French, German and Spanish are the predominant languages of study.

This thesis explores some issues regarding estimations of the cost of capital on the Stockholm Stock Exchange through reverse engineering of the Residual Income Valuation model and through usage of the Capital Asset Pricing Model. Previous studies are in conflict of whether the risk premium changes considerably over time or not. Furthermore, the risk premium estimated by CAPM tends to be fairly stable. In this study, reverse engineering of the cost of capital implied by analysts? forecasts shows a significant difference in the risk premium over time.

The interest in businesses active on the countryside and their funding situation has increased in recent years. In a survey, conducted by Leif Berndtsson (2003), it was reported that there is a lack of external capital in rural areas. According to Berndtsson (2003) the lack of external capital inhibits the rural firm?s growth. The essay attempts to answer whether the shortage of external capital is a factor that inhibits development for rural businesses.

Many companies do not register all the stops that occur in a production plant, it often takes longer to report than to fix the problem. If no problems are registered, you cannot trace where the problems arise.This master thesis was performed at AcobiaFLUX and they have noticed an increased demand from their customers to trace problems raised in their processes. The aim of the thesis was to find out how a tool to monitor a process best could be developed. Then the most essential from the theoretical base was developed into a useful tool for operators. For the operators to know if the process utilizes the full capacity of a process, the tool presents a measure of the Overall Equipment Efficiency, OEE.