The interest for venture capital within the financial sector in Sweden has, according to earlier studies, been seen as a growing occurrence. Especially for what is known as informal venture capital. In modern times, private investors who engage themselves in small, unlisted companies, providing informal venture capital are to be known as business angels. They close equity gaps on the financial market by contribute financial capital to start-ups and are therefore an important participant on today?s market.

This paper investigates whether the traditional accrual based trading strategy first documented by Sloan (1996) can be refined using fundamental analysis. Specifically, this is done by implementing the composite signal F_SCORE introduced by Piotroski (2000) to identify financially strong or weak firms. We find that by applying both investment models simultaneously, in a model we call P_KOMB, the mean market-adjusted return earned by an investor exploiting the accrual anomaly can be increased by 14.8% annually. This is achieved by taking a long position in strong firms (as defined by the composite signal) in the lowest accrual portfolio, while an offsetting short position is taken in weak firms in the highest accrual portfolio, repeated annually between 1997 and 2007. Consistent with prior studies, positive market-adjusted returns can be attained through assessment of accruals as well as key value drivers found in historical financial data.

Latent heat storage is a way to store thermal energy when a phase change material undergoes a phase change. The advantage of latent heat storage is the capability to store more energy per mass unit than other heat storage methods. The most commonly used phase change in latent heat storage is the transition between solid and liquid. Phase change materials can be divided into organics, inorganics and eutectics.In the Nordic electricity market the price of electricity is set every hour by Nordpool spot, which leads to price fluctuations because of changes in demand. The main goal of this report is to create a latent heat storage system in a single-family home and investigate the possibility to save money by charging the latent heat storage system when the price of electricity is low, and discharge when the price is high.The thermodynamic model consisted of a ?tube-in-tube? heat exchanger with phase change material in the outer tube and water as the heat transfer fluid in the inner tube.

Syfte: Syftet med vår magisteruppsats är att utreda hur involverade parter idag inom dagligvarubranschen i Sverige upplever Category Management. Syftet är även att belysa implikationer samt potentialer inom ramen för Category Management inom den svenska dagligvarubranschen. Metod: Vi har arbetat utifrån kvalitativ metod och genomfört både personliga intervjuer samt telefonintervjuer. Vårt empiriska material har därefter varit underlag vid den teoretiska kopplingen. Empiri: Vi har utfört personliga intervjuer med involverade aktörer inom den svenska dagligvarubranschen.

Bakgrund: För att kunna stilla kunders behov och skapa kvalitet och därigenom värde, krävs kunskap. Två teoribildningar som talar om värde och kvalitet respektive kunskap var för sig är Service Management och Knowledge Management. Service Management är huvudsakligen externt orienterad medan Knowledge Management är näst intill uteslutande internt orienterad, vilket medför att vissa "spänningar" återfinns dem emellan. Frågan är hur dessa"spänningar"hanteras i kunskapsföretags värdeskapande. Syfte: Syftet med uppsatsen är att analysera vad Service respektive Knowledge Management bidrar till i förståelsen för kunskapsföretags värdeskapande.

Title: A study about the purchasing process of ITLevel: Master thesis in Information Technology and Business Administration, 15 hp, EIK024Authors: Emelie Johanson and Mikael LindströmTutor: Peter Ekman, Mälardalens HögskolaKeywords: IT-investment, purchase, decisionProblem: In the last decades the amount of IT investments increased and has become an important resource within most organizations. IT gives the ability to compete and could also be a condition for many to be able to compete. In different businesses it could vary in where they put their focus when they choose an IT investment. This thesis examines how the purchase process of IT looks. How does processes differs in a bigger company versus a smaller company? From these two perspectives this study examined these research questions: Who makes the decisions whether or not an IT solution should be purchased? What aspects decide when companies are to choose between different IT solutions? Where in the purchase process do problems usually emerge?Purpose: The purpose of this thesis is to describe and analyze the purchasing process of IT from a business perspective.

We aim to investigate the risk exposure against commodity prices in the forestry and paper industry. The intension is also to study the affect that the changes in commodity prices has on a company?s market value..

A major issue that has been a subject for quite some time is whether there will be a scarcity of metals in the bedrock in the future and whether or not we might end up with a problem similar to that of the big oil crisis in the mid-seventies. Following the oil crisis many oil companies started up with risk management to control future risks. This work presents how Swedish mining companies work with risk management to handle risks that might come up in the future due to metal scarceness. How Swedish mining companies look at the possible metal scarceness and if they use risk management in their decision-making process is studied. By doing interviews with Swedish owned mining companies it was found that the mining companies did not see the future metal scarcity as a risk, even though 2/3 of the companies acknowledged the scarceness to be a reality.

In past decades information technology has changed the conditions of organizations, not at least within the industry. Advanced IT systems have become a fact in order to cope with rapid changes in the market and to effectively manage an organization?s knowledge. When organizations became more flexible and customized expectations from customers and stakeholders also become higher. These expectations and guidelines are documented in a company?s management system, which can be designed differently depending on what standards the company chooses to implement.

Abstrakt -  As energy prices rise, energy-saving in buildings is becoming increasingly important. By applying different construction and installation technologies, to new buildings the energy consumption can be reduced effectively, compared to similar existing buildings. These technical measures are often an investment in the long term and will reduce energy costs significantly. The purpose of this report is to show how to reduce energy consumption in a small house. It is presented in this report that both building's technical saving arrangements (the sealing of a building) and an installation technical arrangement (changing from the F-system to the FTX-system) would reduce energy consumption in newly built detached houses, if compared with a similar existing house but without these technical measures. The report presents also detailed calculations showing how much energy an existing 2-storey house, built in the year 2007 in Eskilstuna, consumes and how much energy would be saved if these corrective measures were applied to a new building. It is also reported how much money would be saved each year over a 10 year period if the measures were applied. The results show that both solutions are a good investment in the reduction of energy consumption and hence the cost involved. Keywords: energy, heat energy, infiltration, FTX-system, free temperature effectively. .

En sammanfattning av uppsatsen på maximalt 8000 tecken..

Syftet är att studera produktutvecklingsprocessen hos Findus Sverige AB, för att utreda vilken roll marknadsföraren har och hur detta påverkar projektets resultat..

En sammanfattning av uppsatsen på maximalt 8000 tecken..

As a result of increased energy prices more and more energy-efficient homes are coveted. An energy-efficient alternative is passive houses, which is characterized by an extremely well insulated building envelope that recovers the heat without the use of radiators or under floor heating. But a passive house requires a higher investment cost than a conventional building project, since it will require more construction materials, training of construction workers, greater land area, and long construction period. But the lower operating cost expects to pay back the higher cost of investment. We therefore question how profitable a passive house is in relation to houses built according to modern conventional building techniques.The aim of our study is to investigate the viability of passive houses compared to convent­ional houses.

A clean and affordable energy source for cooking is deficient in developing countries. People rely on fuels that contribute to environmental, social and health problems.Biogas is an alternative energy source and an increased investment in small-scale biogas production can in several developing countries be found. Several projects have started to use the technology in developing countries because of the benefits with biogas. Some cases in the establishment of biogas plants have succeeded and some have not. The study is a literature review supplemented by two field studies.