Abstract: Private equity used to be synonymous with tremendous yields and rates of return. However, the private equity market trembled in 2008, due to the financial meltdown caused by the worldwide credit crisis. Considering the current low number of exits within the private equity industry, the purpose of this thesis is to examine if there has been any change in how private equity firms control their portfolio companies since the inception of the crisis. One private equity company and two portfolio companies have been studied. The case study is prepared from interviews with senior directors in the portfolio company and investment managers in the private equity firm.

The integration of the Internet in our society has shaped alot of the things we do in our lives. The Web allows us to achieve certain things directly through our computers, such as reading the paper and paying our bills. But this integration has also lead to another interesting change. Activists have begun to unload their operations onto the Net instead of holding on to the more traditional demonstrations performed in squares. This study aims to look into the world of cyberactivism and examine how cyberactivists experience the way activism has changed as a result of using the Internet.

?Liberal Democracy? is a common term in political theory, and it is used as if it had a commonly accepted referent, with both normative and descriptive content. This is certainly the case in democratic theory, where it on the one hand seems to refer to a normative democratic model; on the other hand it is used descriptively, to refer to real-life democracies. The deliberative democratic sub-field is not an exception; on the contrary, the term is frequently used albeit rarely defined; yet the concept it refers to is supposedly developed enough to allow detailed propositions about its citizens?s political behaviour.This essay is an attempt to analyze how Liberal Democracy is used by three deliberative democrats (Jürgen Habermas, John Dryzek and Stephen Elstub), in order to understand the democratic model (or models), whether normative or descriptive, they refer to.

For most dog owners today it is natural to use acoustic stimuli such as talking to communicate with their pets. Words are used both to ask the dogs to perform tricks, as well as to hold ?conversations? with the dog. This literature review looks at how dogs perceive human acoustical communication and how this can influence the behaviour of the dog. This information could be used e.g.

Title: By what strategies is the old media using the new media? A qualitative essay on TV: s use on social mediaNumber of pages: 54Authors: Marie Magnusson och Sabina KarlssonTutor:  Karin FastCourse: Media and Communication Studies CPeriod: Spring 2011University: Karlstad UniversityPurpose/Aim: Our purpose is to examine which strategies and why two TV-channels, SVT and TV4, are using social media. Our anticipated view is that SVT as a public service organization and TV4 as a commercial operator may have different motives with its use of social media.Material/Method: A qualitative method consisting of interviews by informants from SVT and TV4.Main results: Our result is that there isn?t any big difference between SVT and TV4 in the way they?re using social media. However, that SVT has to more specifically make sure no commercialism exists, while TV4 don?t have to think about it.Keywords: Social networking, convergence, commercialism, communication, Internet, public service, television..

During the study's first stage we noticed that the Swedish term ? utanförskap? was constructed for political purposes, the term?s ambiguity what was first raised our interest. Therefore the aims of this study was to examine how social workers at the social welfare office and the labor market related project Framtid Kronoberg  as well as politicians within the administration of Arbete & Välfärd (Work & Welfare) relates to utanförskap as a social phenomenon. The study?s second aim was to examine how the aforementioned persons consider utanförskap to be counteracted among young adults.

Theability to beat the market is one of the most discussed topics in finance. Thereare very few investors that manage to accomplish this over longer periods oftime. Most of the financial research claims that this is impossible unless theinvestor increase the risk in the portfolio. However numerous of researchershave shown that it exist anomalies on the stock market which either indicatesthat the Capital Asset Pricing Modell (CAPM) or Fama and French three-factormodel fails to explain stock returns or that the market is not fully efficient.One investor that has claimed that the stock market is not fully efficient andthat it is possible to generate abnormal return is Benjamin Graham. Graham isone of the legends on Wall Street and he has shown that by using few variablesbased on public information, one can manage to beat the market over longer timeperiods.There arejust a few studies that have tested Graham?s criteria?s, however all of themindicates that they work but that the standard deviation might be higher forthe portfolios.

During the last year in the Innovation Engineering Program, at Halmstad University, a degree project was performed that was carried out during Fall semester in 2006 and Spring semester 2007. The project was performed by two students in corporation with LIC Audio AB, a company in Stockholm. The degree project was meant to result in a communication aid for people with a cognitive handicap. The project focused on people suffering from dementia because of the expressed need within this group. This aid should first and foremost help in a conversation between a person with dementia and another person, like a relative or nursing home staff.

Trading financial securities at stock exchanges and other authorized market places is today a particularly important socioeconomic phenomenon in many industrialized countries. A well functioning securities market is crucial for the economic development in these countries. The modern trading with stocks and other financial securities is characterized by the fact that the majority of the transactions at the stock exchanges are carried out through various intermediaries. The ultimate counterparties that are involved in a securities transaction (the seller and the buyer) are often unknown to each other. The anonymity in the securities trading implies several interesting legal problems.

This report is about Adobe Acrobat 3D and their new PDF format witch can contain 3 dimensional models that are interactive. The purpose is to find out if the program and the format work in a level that is suitable for the market. To create this PDF you need Acrobat 3D installed on your computer but it only needs Acrobat Reader 7 or 8 to open it, and the Reader is free to download on the internet.The examination is focusing on four formats: U3D, 3DS, DWG and DXF because they are the most common in the building industry seen from the architects? way. From a 3D model exported to these four formats they where converted to PDF in different settings to be compared in different points as information and size of the files.

This thesis follows a qualitative method and aim to describe firms? international business at an emerging market seen from a network perspective. The purpose of the thesis is to study in what way business relations and networks influence the process of internationalization and describe the way in which companies handle the external network in relation to acquisitions. Further does our purpose include analyzing if a firm?s network may be the main factor for why international business occurs.

The electric vehicle market has potential to contribute to Sweden?s national goal to have a fossil fuel independent transport sector by 2030. However, the market answers to a lot of challenges making it difficult for the market to fully reach its potential. The volume of electric vehicles has seen a steady increase during the last year (2012), although many of these vehicles are mostly for PR purposes or bought by the public sector that wants to lead by example. Still, barriers in the form of high purchase costs, an anxiety for the limited battery capacity and the lack of standardisation are some of the problems that the market is struggling to solve.

The time we live in now is significant for its many ways of spreading information- it is indeed the era of communication. The Internet is the main reason for this evolution, where you can reach out to any corner in the world in less then a second. Information is flowing over us and we get more and more used to being in a constant accessible state. The individual might spread his own word as he wishes. From a democratic point of view this should give a great opening for everyone into the public spheer.

AbstractTitle: Swedish freedom of speech compared to european freedom of speechNumber of pages: 57Author: Gabriella BoodeTutor: Göran SvenssonCourse: Media and Communication Studies CPeriod: Spring 2009University: Division of Media and Communication, Department of Information Science,Uppsala UniversityPurpose/Aim: The purpose with the dissertation is to see if there has been a limitation inSwedish freedom of speech since parts of the European union laws is superiour to theSwedish constitution as freedom of the press regulations and freedom of speech constitution.A more narrow purpose is to find out how the specific Swedish rights such as individual?slegal right to publish information are influenced by the European union laws and are superiorto the freedom of the press regulations and freedom of speech constitutionThe survey will also try to find out the effectiveness with the Lisbon Strategy ?s emergencybrake and its purpose to protect the Swedish freedom of the press regulations and freedom ofspeech constitution. How big is the difference between the different member states concerningthe protection of the freedom of speech?Material/Method: The data collected for this thesis is retrieved through personal interviewswith representives from experts with in the field as Uppsala University and the SwedishGovernent.Main results: It is obvious that Sweden has the strongest protection of freedom of speechcomparing to the other EU member states. No other EU country has as detailed constitution asthe Swedish constitution TF and YGL.

There are many different forms of financing for small businesses and two common financing options mentioned in the study, bank loans and Venture Capital.Venture Capital is a form of risk capital financing, investing in unlisted stock market. The feature of the arrangement is that those people are trying to find companies that can offer unique, attractive and in demand products on a strong growing market. Since VC-firms are taking a big risk in cooperation with the investment, the VC-company strong demands while assessments are made on the company will generate a return in the future.Bank loans are the most common form of financing for companies in the market. Requirements and assessment under the law is hard especially for small businesses because financing entails high risks. Banks require that the liquidity management in the enterprise should be stable because the bank's main objective is to repayment of debt and the interest payable on the capital.The purpose of this study is to examine the requirements and assessments VC-firms and banks make use of the financing of small businesses. .