Background: When firms grow through acquisitions it is commonly debated whether the two entities ought to be better off as standalone companies rather than as a merged company. This thesis aims at discussing this issue of M&As advantages and disadvantages in terms of source of synergies from the perspective of resource allocation. Purpose: The purpose of this thesis is to describe and analyze to what extent pre-M&A differences (against similarities) in resource allocation and corporate culture between the acquiring and target firm have an impact on the post-M&A performance. Theoretical framework: Efficient market hypothesis, resource based view, strategic fit. Methodology: A longitudinal study is conducted on the EU market during 1992 to 2002 based on balance sheet and income statement data.

Summary Title Are older consumers of interest for the Swedish Apparel market?A study of older consumers? attitudes and interests in apparel Deadline 12 January, 2007 Course FEK 533 Authors Brusk Kutlay and Linda Nordén Tutors Björn Carlsson and Roland Knutsson Keywords Older consumer, apparel, lifestyle, attitudes, consumer behavior Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate weather the 50+ segment is a strong market for apparel, i.e. if it is an interesting market for the Swedish apparel industry. The aim is to contribute to a better understanding of consumers? attitudes toward apparel shopping on the Swedish market.

In the current situation in the housing market and in particular the inner city much attention is directed towards achieved prices per square meter in sales. The indicator is as a principle an appropriate measure of the housing market?s health and development, and can to some extent be used to make approximations of the general economic health status of municipalities and counties. It occurs occasionally that questions about whether prices are based on fundamentals at all times.The thesis questions that very issue, not from a macro accompanying financial perspective but rather from a microeconomic perspective, where each tenant ownership in the study is a micro-object. Are the observed prices per square meter rational relative to housing cooperative?s assets or is there a lack in the observed prices anchoring the respective association's finances.

Electricity production from renewable energy resources such as wind energy and photovoltaics is variable. Integration of these intermittent resources into the electricity system leads to new challenges in how to manage imbalance between supply and demand on the grid.One way to meet these challenges is to develop so-called smart grid solutions. One idea, called demand response, is to adjust the amount or timing of energy consumption, e.g. by control of household appliances, to provide flexibility that could be used to balance the grid. In aggregate, when applied to many units across the system, large volumes of energy could be made available when needed and this grid flexibility can be used as a product on the electricity regulation market.Despite the potential benefits, the number of demand response bids is currently low.

Previous research has found an increased transmission of stock movements in Europe, partly caused by the establishment of institutions as the EU and the EMU. The purpose of this paper is to find the possible impact from the EU and the EMU concerning the evolution of international transmission of stock market movements, on four Scandinavian markets, Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden. The research is based on primary data, existing theories and earlier studies regarding international transmission of stock market movements. The examined method is a VAR (Vector autoregressive model) including a 10x1 vector of variables. Furthermore the tests considered are correlation, granger-causality, variance decomposition and impulse response.

The purpose of the study is to investigate whether insiders generate an abnormal return compared with other investors on the Swedish Stock Market. This abnormal return is defined as the cumulative average abnormal return (CAAR). The other purpose is to investigate whether it would be profitable for ?outsiders? to mimic the transactions of insider trades. The results indicate several significant abnormal returns on insider trades, especially on buy transactions.

Milk and milk consumption has been subject of discussion for a long time, and is still a hot topic. Recently, as study was published that observed a correlation between milk intake and increased risk of fractures and mortality. The authors proposed the milk?s content of D-galactose as the possible mechanism, since D-galactose is used indicated ageing in animal models. Therefore, this study aims to develop a method to determine the amount of galactose, glucose and lactose in milk and fermented milk and apply it on to dairy products on the Swedish market.

This paper discusses the issue of trade dress imitation in the grocery sector. Our study has its starting point in the conflict that may arise between a brand owner and an imitator following an imitator?s marketing actions. In this study we look at the Market Court?s precedents in which this question has been addressed.

This candidate thesis contains the possibility of expand the Swedish photovoltaic market through photovoltaic cooperatives and a photovoltaic exchange. In the current situation there is a lot of problems with production of electricity from photovoltaic, that?s why we show some possibilities how to avoid these. To understand the problem with photovoltaic produced electricity we first give you a background.We show how to expand the Swedish photovoltaic market by describing how a photovoltaic cooperative and photovoltaic exchange could work in Sweden. It have been confirmed from our market research that the interest of photovoltaic cooperative and exchange is high.To find out how profitable photovoltaic is in Sweden, have three projections been made.

The aim of this thesis is to identify some of the obstacles to trade, that occurs on the common market, and to analyse the errors that still occurs in the national authorities application of the principle of mutual recognition. Is the principle of mutual recognition sufficient for the creation of a common market, or is there a need for additional measures to cope with the obstacles to trade that still exists on the common market? The problems related to the incorrect procedures of the national authorities and the fact that undertakings prefer to bring their products in to line with the rules of every single member state must be solved, if the principle of mutual recognition is to become trustworthy. On some areas, harmonisation ought to be chosen above the principle of mutual recognition, but in other cases an increased administrative collaboration, mandatory training for the national authorities or information campaigns intended mainly for undertakings could be the answer. The possibility to help undertakings to sue member states for damages should also be investigated.

Internet dating is a relatively new phenomenon that, in using the opportunities of the internet, has taken traditional dating to a new level. The business idea is simple as such. The company provides its customers with a platform that enables interaction, leaving the value creation to the customers. A qualitative study is conducted investigating and mapping the Swedish market for Internet dating. It is researched what the characteristics of the companies are, what the Internet dating businesses in Sweden offer, what the prevailing market conditions are, and lastly what challenges lie ahead for the industry and how they can be solved.

The aim of this Masters thesis is to examine the view of funding and sponsorship of culture within Swedish governmental cultural policy. The main issue is to discover changes in attitude towards funding and sponsorship of culture by comparing the discourse of cultural policy in the 1970s with the discourse of cultural policy in the 1990s. The theoretical and methological starting point is Ernesto Laclaus and Chantal Mouffes discourse theory. Another theoretical starting point is Danish cultural policy reasearcher Dorte Skot-Hansens theories of the development of cultural policy in the Nordic countries, and Norman Faircloughs, of critical discourse analysis, theory of the marketization of discourse. Four governmental cultural policy documents, two from the 1970s and two from the 1990s, are analysed through a model loosely based on Laclaus and Mouffes idea of nodalpoints and elements constituting a discourse.

The thesis handles the principal-agency problem between shareholders and the Chief Executive Officer. The purpose of the thesis was to examine the link between CEO compensation and corporate performance measured as a change in Market to Book ratio. Data was collected from corporate annual reports between the years 2000 ? 2008 and the study covers 39 Swedish companies from the Stockholm Stock Exchange Large Cap list. To examine whether there is a link between the CEO´s compensation and firm performance, we performed a regression analysis, and no significant relation is found.

The process of food production has changed dramatically over the past one hundred years. Industrialization has led to large units of production, manufacturing, distribution, marketing and retail business. The final food product, in this system, is quite often fairly anonymous and the consumer will most likely know very little concerning the origin of the product. In recent years, the market for locally produced food has grown. There is an increasing interest in and demand for locally produced food items.

The cost of capital for traded companies is basically assessed on information from thefinancial market. Small and non-traded companies are lack of this necessary financialmarket information in order to determine an appropriate equity risk premium and tocompute the cost of capital.In the absence of financial information necessary for an external investor, it is difficult toevaluate a non-traded company with the Capital Asset Pricing model (CAPM), which isbased on the financial market information. It measures only the systematic risk, which isthe contribution of one share to the market risk of a portfolio. It is therefore important tofind models that reflect the small and non-traded companies? real business value and theirunique characteristics.