Stock lending is primarily a professional activity. The supply of stocks in the lending market comes mainly from pension funds and insurance companies, while intermediaries provide valuable services by taking positions as borrowers as well as lenders. Borrowers use stock lending for various reasons. For instance, hedge funds usually borrow stocks to cover a short position. There has been a lot of controversy in the stock lending industry and the debate has mainly concerned its effects for the stock Markets.

The purpose of this thesis is to create a greater understanding of relationships and networks on regulated Markets. This includes what the climate are like on such a market and how different aspects within relationships and networks are affected by regulations. By the use of a deductive approach, a qualitative study was performed. This was carried out by interviewing different actors on the Swedish market of alcoholicbeverages. The theoretical framework includes relationship quality, consisting of power and dependence, cooperation,adaptation and trust.

In recent years, global organizations safeguarding financial stability has started to track commercial property Markets. One of the reasons for this refers to the fact that commercial property constitutes a large share of bank lending. Simultaneously, bank exposures to commercial property are extensive and risky since collateral values are strongly correlated to borrowers cash flows. Since banks are viewed to play a key role for financial stability, studying the relationship is well motivated. To better understand how commercial property Markets interact with financial stability, this paper develops an econometric model for studying the commercial rental market.

The globalization of today?s society has enabled consumers to acquire products and services from all over the world. Global organizations have the entire world as a playfield and offer products and services across Markets. Regardless perception and transparency of the global market, consumers are still individuals. Consumers may have different perceptions and ideas about products, their functions and usage.

Within the interconnected global Markets of today; people, products, and information travel at a pace never met before. In light of the global retail Markets recent integration, consumers are opened up to new products and are beginning to develop a vetted interest in the heritage of those products. Within literature this process has been coined "Country of Origin" COO, and its impacts on consumer attitudes, product value- assessment, and overall behaviors has been one of the most emphasized areas of "international business" studies, during the last three decades. Numerous studies have shown a correlation between positive or advantageous associations to a country of origin, and the actual products representing and coming out of that country. It is by this synergetic process that so-called positive COO-effects are brought forth.The goal of this thesis stems directly from the still unexplored potential for Swedish firms to differentiate their products and brands on new international Markets, through a strategic and coherent communication of relevant Swedish COO-effects.

The research aims at revealing consumers? loyalty to a high involvement product category, connected to a loyalty membership club. Hence, the study aims at explaining similarities and differences between two Markets, differently developed in terms of loyalty clubs. The study used IKEA, its loyalty club IKEA FAMILY and women as the company?s main target group, in a case format to study loyalty membership clubs.

The main purpose of this Master Thesis has been to evaluate whether active fund management is profitable on Emerging Markets. The material used to examine this consists of 106 actively managed funds, with varying length during the period 1988-2006 and who uses MSCI Emerging Markets (MSCI EM) as benchmark index. The thesis has been written under the supervision of the Asset Management Department of Länsförsäkringar AB (LFAB) and the Department of Production Economics, Linköping Institute of Technology. Apart from the main purpose, the methodology used is also meant to form a template for in-depth or similar studies, preferably by the assigner of this survey, LFAB.The results shows that the median manager underperforms the MSCI EM throughout the whole period, which leads to the conclusion is that active management on Emerging Markets is not profitable. A grouping of the funds based on tracking error still shows that a majority of the managers in all of the groups underperforms against the benchmark.

The negative trend of newspapers reading gives the owner of several paper manufacturingcompanies in the West worries. Producers should be more concern to strengthen their marketpositions in order to maintain profitability in the paper mills. Holmen Paper is a medium sizedpaper mill company with all of their production in Europe. Sales are mainly made to printingcompanies operating in European countries. In order to strengthen their economic strengthHolmen Paper needs to increase the market share in Markets where they have the greatestprofit margins.

Abstract The internationalisation of a company is enabled by integration of Markets. New Markets mean new revenues, but also demand capital to finance the expansion. To bring in new capital may offer new possibilities but also higher debt-equity ratios, which affect how external interested parties value the company. This thesis, inspired by previous and mainly US based research, researches the debt-equity ratio of Swedish multinational and domestic companies, sampled from the Stockholm Stock Exchange. The research questions have focused on the impact of certain internationalisation variables on the debt-equity ratio; how does the debt-equity ratio differ between international and domestic companies? Can a difference be explained by the degree of internationalisation? Can a difference be better explained by the presence of international ownership? By measuring the concept internationalisation as both trade and presence, the questions were operationalised into four hypotheses.

Increased trade and eased policy restrictions have brought Markets closer together. Prices at different locations are much likely to affect each other to a certain extent. Since the adaption of Common Agricultural Policy in 1995 the Swedish wheat market has been exposed to the world market and Swedish farmers are facing new challenges. A broader knowledge about market integration and price transmission will facilitate Swedish farmers, banks and politicians in making rational decisions. Therefore the aim of this research is to explain how global wheat prices are transmitted on Swedish wheat prices.

Background: As Porter?s diamond (1990) suggested, the business environment highly influences firms? strategies. Today, most of the companies have to decide their strategy depending from a worldwide business environment. Yet, strategy researches and the growing importance of marketing for business success also show that customer dimension must be taken into consideration. On some Markets and in certain industries, the offer is much higher than the demand and then, companies need to attract customers.

China is considered as one of the world?s fastest growing economies and the future of China looks promising. Even though the Chinese market attracts many new foreign companies to enter the market there are entry barriers which companies may encounter as obstacles, which will aggravate the market entry in China. As a result companies loose business opportunities and therefore it is of great importance for Swedish companies, which are planning a Chinese market entry, to identify which entry barriers that are considered to be the most difficult obstacles to overcome.The purpose of the thesis is to examine which entry barriers that are generally considered to be the most difficult obstacles for Swedish companies to overcome when entering Chinese Markets and to rank the five most difficult entry barriers to overcome.Information about these entry barriers have been gathered from Swedish companies, which have carried out successful market entries in the Chinese Markets, through an e-mail questionnaire.The result generally shows that the most difficult entry barriers to overcome in China were: bureaucracy, property laws, language, cultural differences and difficulties finding local partners. The ranking of the entry barriers? result shows that bureaucracy is the most difficult obstacle to overcome, followed by cultural differences, language, relations and access to distribution channels.We conclude that companies experience different difficulties overcoming these entry barriers, which depends on the companies? size, years in China, Markets and if the entry barriers were considered controllable or uncontrollable.

In efforts to strengthen local economies, business development programs are often a way in which governmental organizations and state affiliates try to facilitate innovation and successful entrepreneurship. There is a mutual interest from both the public and private sector that these funds are put to good use. Extensive research has been conducted with the focus of the general effect of public support programs. However, not much research has been done on what external factors affect the situation for receiving businesses. This study attempts to examine whether one specific such factor, the level of maturity on the Markets that the recipients operate in, has a discernible effect on the needs for different types of entrepreneurial support.

The automotive industry is today in a world of globalisation and external factors can influence the car companies and it is important that they progress with the people. When an external factor, as the oil price, increases dramatically, it will affect the economies in different matters. Other external factors are impacted by the oil price, for example inflation, unemployment and target rates. In addition, people are changing their preferences due to the attention of the environment. With this as the foundation the problem of the essay were divided into three aspects.

Social networks have become an important factor in today?s society. Companies as well as individuals are using these platforms to interact with one another on a daily basis. This phenomenon has mostly been acknowledged by companies on B2C Markets where these social network sites are being used to communicate their brand. On B2B Markets however, the usage of these platforms have not been as optimistically implemented.