Background: Increasingly, companies choose to finance their business with corporate bonds which has resulted in an increased demand on credit ratings. As such the rating agencies have a very important role in the financial markets. Examining the value of a credit-rating can be very interesting for both issuer and investor. Purpose: The purpose of the study is to identify and define the value of rating. Execution: The study is built upon nine interviews with rated and non-rated firms and investors.

This report is the concluding part of the course national minorities, main focus on design, at Luleå University of Technology spring 2007. The purpose of this written examination is to produce a prototype to a product, which can be used both when marketing Kiruna as a student municipality and when recruiting students to the study programmes Kiruna offers. The product has been produced through systematic problem solving, where methods to fix the problem, gather facts, examine and come to a solution have been used. The product should in one way or another get the student to think of Kiruna as a student municipality and it should also appeal to the target group ? the students.

Introduction and background: The 1990s crisis and the global financial crisis year 2008 shows the same indications that the property market was affected negative. The Swedish Property companies had a difficult time on the market when the crisis led to decreased property trade and financing problems for the Property companies. The Swedish property companies became less attractive on the market and contributed to a drop in prices on investment property.Purpose: The purpose of this essay is to examine if there is any relation between the Swedish Property companies impairments on their investment property and the global financial crisis year 2008.Method: The essay is based on a quantitative study where we examined Swedish Property companies? annual reports. We answered our questions and our purpose from the empirical data that we collected from the annual reports.Conclusions: The study resulted in that we found a correlation between the Swedish Property companies? impairments on their investment properties and the global financial crisis year 2008.

This study deals with the technical and economic feasibility of replacing the nuclear power plant reactor Ringhals 3 with a biofuel power plant. A technical investigation has been executed to determine which of the systems and components that could be reused and which ones would need to be replaced. The investment costs of the reconstruction have also been estimated. The cost of the electricity production has been calculated as well as the emissions of the new biofuel power plant. Based on the established rate of return, the lowest average spot price of electricity that makes the investment profitable has been calculated.

Background: There has been an increase in savings and investment in recent years along with an increased interest in responsible investments. Ethical mutual funds has developed and gained increasingly popularity.Aim: The aim of the study is to examine if ethical mutual funds are an equivalent alternative to traditional mutual funds in terms of return, risk and risk-adjusted return on the Swedish stock market.Theory: Beta, Jensen's Alpha, Sharpe ratio, Treynor ratio, and Modern Portfolio Theory.Method: Quantitative survey method, a statistical study.Conclusion:The study concludes that there is no significant difference between ethical and conventional mutual funds in terms of return, risk and risk-adjusted return. The small differences that exist between the two fund groups are in favor of the ethical fund group, indicating that funds is a comparable investment option compared to traditional mutual funds..

During recent years, financial innovation has given rise to numerous structured investment opportunities aimed towards the general public. These have enabled private investors to engage in high-risk investments offering as much as 400 per cent leverage while oftentimes not fully having grasped the risk involved. The issuers of these securities have been criticized for using advertising of a too aggressive and misleading nature.By presenting 819 potential investors with two different investment opportunities yielding the same return over a six day period, we have aimed to assess whether the inclination of being affected by judegmental heuristics varies with factors such as knowledge, overall attitude towards the asset class, risk appetite and experience from previous investments.We have observed that investors' perception of the attractiveness of an investment can be distorted by altering the information presented to the investor. However, our findings show that this tendency decreases with an increased level of knowledge, experience and risk appetite..

In recent years, awareness of the climate change has increased around the world. Environmental issues have been taking into consideration, both by individuals and companies. Therefore the demands for new environmental friendly technology have increased, also known as cleantech. To further establish and develop cleantech it requires capital. Venture capitalists have as well seen the potential.To increase the number of Venture capital investments in cleantech, it is important the investments generate good returns.

This study explores how consumers' attitudes and intentions-to-buy towards an atypical product can be influenced by the presentation of the product and consumers shopping goals. Moreover, another product, which was shown together with the atypical piece, was analyzed in order to investigate context effects. The aim of the study is to provide insights into a rather unexplored subject and help retailers in presenting their assortment in a way which will create a better perception and intention-to-buy towards the assortment. The study was conducted with the help of two studies, the first one aimed to find an atypical item and to see how attitudes could be affected by differences in presentation by comparing it with a typical item within the same category. The second study used the identified atypical piece in order to see the how attitude and intention-to-buy could be altered by presentation and consumer shopping goals.

It is important, for companies operating on a homogeneous product market, to understand and adapt to customer needs. Since coffee is a homogeneous product in food retail it is vital for coffee companies to work extensively with differentiation and the fierce competition. The prevailing homogenity makes it difficult for companies to develop the product itself and must therefore work to create added value to the product.The purpose of this thesis is to carry out a study on consumer decision-making when purchasing homogeneous products, and to examine how companies work to strengthen their brand and gain market share in a homogeneous product market. The market that this thesis highlights is the coffee market.To answer the purpose of this thesis the writers have conducted a questionnaire survey regarding consumers? decision-making process and interviewed two marketing managers for two major actors on the coffee market.

The purpose of this research was to examine what motivates and influences an individual to invest in a project or company through equity-based crowdfunding. The intention was therefore to identify internal and external motivation factors and examine how external social factors such as the Internet, other individuals? investment decisions and interaction in social groups affect an individual when he or she invests through equity-based crowdfunding. The results showed that both internal and external motivation factors are important components of an investment through equity-based crowdfunding. External motivators proved to be for example yields and helping entrepreneurs.

The project has been implemented in collaboration with Carl-Johan Lundberg on Deltagruppen Ltd in Jönköping. Problem introduction comes from Carl-Johan's own experience from the hotel sector. The problem that all hotels has is that they sell two products, i e. simple - and double rooms. Persons that travel in companies do not desire always to share bed.Focus in the work is to develop a product that holds together two simple beds and forms double bed, concurrent that it goes that converters to two simple bed without needing to disassemble the product and be done invisible.

The catchphrase this project has been; the boundaries between ornamentation and improvisation are fluid.My aim was to focus on my work process, giving me the space and time so develop my design further regarding shape, color and combination of different styles in patterns.This is an explorative project where patterns were created without a predetermined product of which the patterns would be applied. In a later stage the character of the pattern determined which product that would be most suitable for application.It resulted in a collection of patterns for wallpaper and clothing. The motives are foxes, geometrical shapes and squares from a notebook. These motives form an ornamental expression in the patterns with the purpose of embellishment and therefore increase the emotional value of the product..

Intro: 80 percent of the Swedish population own shares. This makes Sweden the leading country in private investment in securities. It can be difficult for the private investor to know where, when and which security to invest in. The strategies are as ambivalent as the stock markets fluctuations. If the investor prefers to refrain from investing money himself, there are brokers who carry out these types of services.

 IAS 40 allows two methods of valuation for investment properties, fair value model and cost model. The purpose of this paper is to investigate what drive property companies to disclose their investment properties at fair value. In order to understand their choice, we use accounting choice theory and the three factors this theory describes, information asymmetry, allowing opportunism and agency costs. To answer our purpose, we have from a qualitative approach performed semi-structured interviews with respondents from five of the largest listed property companies in Sweden. The results suggest that firms have chosen the method that is most effective in the valuation of investment properties.

Logosol is a company that produce small-scale wood processing products. To be able to expand the business Logosol have decided to increase exports, their target markets are the US, Russia, Germany and Norway. The expansion has mainly been through subsidiaries situated on the abroad markets. The subsidiaries have done poor results and that has influenced the whole company. CEO Bengt-Olov Byström made a decision to sell out the units to the people who worked in the business.