The aim of this small thesis is to investigate if the probability of business failure is higher at the time of divestment than at the time of acquisition for portfolio companies that have been subject to private equity ownership. The background for this thesis is the widespread critique aimed at private equity firms, claiming that they increase the risk in their portfolio companies. We have performed a study of 53 buyout transactions, involving Swedish manufacturing companies, covering a time span of 13 years, from 1995 to 2007. We find evidence of an increased risk of business failure for the portfolio companies with a short forecasting horizon (within one year). The absolute increase in the sample is however small.

AbstractTitle:Behovet av kundorientering i fastighetsföretag, finns det?Author:Joel Nilsson ErlemanTutor:Agneta SundströmPurpose:Thru a quality point of view, examine and analyze how Akelius AB customer orientatesthem self in an area such as Brandbergen, were the demand is larger then the supply.Method:Through a qualitative research approach with an inductive and a hermeneutic orientation thestudy approaches Akelius AB and the company?s costumer orientation thru several interviews and asurvey. The gathered data?s purpose is to answer research questions to investigate how costumerorientations function and to how to implement it in real estate companies.Theory:The theory explains the meaning of customer orientation and its use in real estate companies.The theoretical discussion is based on a five-gap model, which is used to analyze the service quality inAkelius AB and to analyze the relation to their costumers.Empire:The findings show how Akelius experience costumer orientation in Brandbergen and thecostumer?s perception of Akelius AB service quality.Analysis:Compares the theory and the empirical data to see the service quality thru using the GapModel.Conclusion:Akelius AB satisfy their customer?s need in what could be expected of them. In thesituation with increased demand and lower supply Akelius AB have the possibility to offer theircostumers a much lower quality than the costumers usually wants and expect.

Since we all live in an increasingly globalized world where goods and money are transported more easily and with tougher competition, it is a natural step for Swedish companies to establish themselvs abroad in order to increase their gorwth rate and reach more customers. Today all of us belong to the same global network and the purpose of this thesis is to investigate which factors are important for companies when they choose to establish themselvs on a foreign market. The focus of the investigation has been the market of Germany and Spain, since both countries just like Sweden are members of the European Union, but still have quite different characteristics. We, the authors, have also been living in Spain and Germany during the time of investigation and writing. The companies we have chosen to look closer into are Abba Seafood, which now has merged with Procordia Food, and Oatly AB.

The thesis had its starting point in the first paragraph of the eleventh chapter in the Swedish social services act, which discusses the immediate risk assessments that has to be made when the social services receive a report about a child. The thesis highlights an area that has received a lot of attention in media since the spring of 2014, when an eight year old girl was fatally abused by her legal guardians. The social services had at the time received a report about the girl but it was left unread. This tragic case has brought attention to the routines used by the social services for dealing with reports and risk assessments. This thesis was conducted through individual interviews with social workers working with children and families in the social services, with the aim to acquire an enhanced understanding of how social workers perform immediate risk assessments and what these assessments are based on.

This qualitative study investigates the conditions on the labour market for disabled people by examining which factors and processes contribute to disabled peoples inclusion to, or exclusion from the open labour market. Stigmatisation is also used as an analytical tool to better understand the exclusion of disabled people from the open labour market. The material to this study is drawn from qualitative interviews with the employees of the Swedish Employment Agency which specialises in supporting disabled people to find employment.  In conclusion, disabled people face several barriers which makes them more susceptible to become excluded from the open labour market. Such excluding barriers include a demand for high efficiency and productivity from employers, bigger cooperation?s and public organisations unwillingness to employ disabled people and prejudices from employers, especially against people with psychiatric disabilities. The employees of the Swedish Employment Agency suggest that they would be able to work more efficiently to help disabled people find employment if they had to do less administrative work, and would be able to work with fewer clients per employee.

The purpose of this thesis is to investigate the status of Swedish real estate companies in terms of financial health and risk of financial distress. The background is the ongoing financial crisis, which partly can be derived from the American real estate sector. Publicly available accounting information from 16 listed real estate companies has been analyzed for a period of one year using financial ratios covering both the operational and financial activities. We find that the deceleration in the economy and in the real estate sector have forced the real estate companies to make large write downs, in line with the relatively new accounting rules, IFRS. Write downs are likely to reoccur during the following periods and real estate companies will therefore probably be forced to continue to show negative results.

This paper analyses how Swedish fine-art oil paintings sold at auctions has performed as a monetary investment during the period autumn 1985 until spring 2006. An average price technique as well as a hedonic regression technique, applied to a sample of 19 213 auction sales, is used to construct price indices. The indices show somewhat different results, which is explained by the inability of the average price model to adjust for relative differences in quality between periods. The hedonic regression model on the other hand captures this effect, why the hedonic index is applied in a financial return model. By adjusting for transaction cost, the financial return of an average investment in paintings is calculated.

Bakgrund: De flesta svenskarna sparar i form av värdepapper för att investera sina pengar och få en avkastning. Vilket placeringsalternativ ska de välja mellan investering i traditionella eller speciella fonder? De traditionella fonderna har en relativ avkastning och en stor risk, medan de speciella eller hedgefonderna har en lägre risk och en absolut positiv avkastning oavsett marknadsläge.I denna studie kommer att undersökas om hedgefonders avkastningsmönster är trovärdig, och om deras målsättning har uppnåtts under åtta års period.Syfte: Syftet med denna studie är att undersöka om det finns ett samband mellan olika svenska hedgefonders investeringsstrategier och avkastningsmönster samt undersöka hur dessa hedgefonder skiljer sig från de traditionella fonderna och marknadsindexet. Delsyftet är att studera två olika perioder och urskilja hur fonderna presterar under hög respektive låg konjunktur läge.Metod: Studien är baserad på forskningsstrategin kvantitativa metoden. Sekundär data i form av historiska avkastningssiffror för åttaårsperiod är avhämtad.

Master thesis in Business Administration, Swedish Business School at ÖrebroUniversity, spring semester 2012Authors: Anders Oskarsson & Christian UhlanderTitle: I?m going to make you rich! -With a little help from PiotroskiResearch objective: This paper examines whether a simple account-based analysis strategy,F_SCORE, can improve returns earned by an investor. The results show that F_SCORE generated a69,7 % annual return between 2001-2010 at the Swedish market, which was better than the furtherdeveloped model A_SCORE. Overall, the evidence suggests that the market does not incorporatehistorical information into prices in a timely manner.Methodology: The foundation for this thesis is based on a quantitative approach and empiricalmaterial is gathered from Thomson Reuters Datastream for the Swedish market..

In this report a systematic working procedure for risk classification of processing equipment from a maintenance point of view is described. How this system has been worked out is also an important part of the report. The classification system is adapted for use in complex processing plants. Preemraff Göteborg has been subject for the underlying study and application of the system.The system aims to give a good overview of the maintenance related risks at the plant. Furthermore, the analysis result is a good motivation for the suggested maintenance activities and as motivation for extended or decreased maintenance resources in total.

As of today, securitization is an established product on the capital market. The first transaction was made in the US in the 1970s. Since then the product has been developed and today there are several different structures of the product. Internationally securitization has been used for two reasons. Originally securitization was used to gain capital relief, but since capital requirements such as Basel II were implemented, the usage of securitization changed to more of a funding source.

Analys av portföljer, sammansatta av hög-, mellan- och lågrisk aktier..

Bachelor of Science, Construction and real estate economics at the University of Halmstad, Sweden, 2012. Author: Emilia Bjuvensjo? and Emma Davidson Advisor: Sven-Ola CarlssonExaminer: Kent Sahlgren Title: Condominiums ? A study of what factors are preventing condominiums from having a breakthrough on the Swedish housing market.Background:In Sweden condominiums have been discussed over and over again during the past 100 years. The government decided that on the 1st of May 2009 they would introduce a new kind of housing-form, condominiums. Ever since the new law came into force, no major changes have been done in the Swedish condominium market.

The Forthcoming Essay concerns the publicly protected employment (Offentligt skyddad anställning), it's content and what actually happens to its participants after they have retrieved it. We have also, during our research, discovered a great lack of background research concerning this subject. Beside statistics and publicly protected employment rulework there only exist a small amount of research. This is mainly focused on people with physical function disorders and socialmedicial function.Of that we believe there is an urgent need to undertake more research in this unexplored sector of the labour market. Our purpose with this essay was to examine what happened to publicly protected employment -participants after they had undergone the process.- In what ways has the participation in publicly protected employment altered their possibilities on the labour market?- What happens to the participants when they after the participation in publicly protected employment as judged qualified not for the labour market?In this essay we have chosen a qualitative method as an approach, mainly because we consider our material as being qualitative in its character.

Over the last decade, the private insurance market has undergone a stable growth in turnover and growing demand for insurance products in all Member States of the European Union. Therefore, the creation of a single market in insurance will enable consumers to have access to wider choice of insurance products, and insurance companies to gain access to markets in various Member States and compete effectively. The EU legal framework for the insurance industry embraces the Treaty freedoms of services, establishment and capital, the EC Directives and the ECJ case-law. The present thesis identifies numerous factors that hinder the Community insurance market integration and offers possible remedies. The summary of the market obstacles is all-inclusive and reflects the responses to the questionnaires and the Commission surveys.