The banking industry is a fundamental part of the economy in Sweden. Despite its importance, the competition and the concentration level within the Swedish banking sector is relatively unexplored. This paper aims to examine the development of the concentration level in the Swedish banking sector during a period of ten years, 2003 to 2013. The examined banks in the study are the four largest banks in Sweden; Handelsbanken, Nordea, SEB and Swedbank, and four selected niche banks, ICA banken, Ikano Bank, Länförsäkringar Bank and Skandiabanken. In order to examine the development in percentage change, there are six selected variables; loans, deposits and borrowings (both public and households), net interest income and return on equity, which are observed during a period of ten years.

Students today, in the banking system, are the least loyal group. Students are also the most costly group due to the large investments, made by the banks, for them. Banks have generalized all students in one category and have adapted their offering regardless of students? social statues. As the students banking needs are dependent on their position in their lifecycle, generalizing them in one group is not optimal.The aim of this thesis is to investigate those factors which influence students? choice of bank.

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 purpose of this thesis is to examine how social procurement can be a further development of public-private partnership. This is done with interviews and a case study of the social procurement Mitt Gröna Kvarter and its labor effort Boendebyggarna. The theoretical framework used in the thesis consists of public-private partnership and corporate social responsibility. It tries to answer the following questions:What does this social procurement mean by the concept of public-private partnership?What does this social procurement mean for the participants involved?How can social procurement be seen as a further development of public-private partnership?The thesis uses the theory development around the concepts of public-private partnership and corporate social responsibility and shows that social procurement does indeed have similarities to public-private partnership and could very well be a further development of it..

Uppsatsen behandlar de investeringskriterier och värderingsmetoder som svenska Private Equity-företag använder inför företagsförvärv. Vi har gjort en kvalitativ analys av fem svenska Private Equity-aktörer. Våra slutsater är att de Private Equity-bolag vi studerat har ett fåtal övergripande investeringskriterier men att de är relativt flexibla gällande resterande. Företagen använder sig främst av multipelvärdering i värderingsprocessen. Sammanfattningsvis kan vi konstatera att Private Equity-företagen fokuserar mindre på vad företaget är värt och lägger allt fokus på hur mycket företaget kan avyttras för..

Private label introductions have been increasing in recent years. The main reason for this is that private labels increase the retailer's profits in the category. The purpose of this study is to examine how a private label introduction affects the category's performance. This study was conducted by studying the category's performance before and after the introduction, two categories are examined. Data have been collected at a Swedish retailer and consists of 38 stores, all located in Sweden and within the same store profile..

Banks are an important institution for the economy of a society. During the later years the world of banking has changed. Several new actors have entered the market and taken over traditional bankservices as well as new ones. The way of conducting banking has changed with the event of new technology. One of the banks customer segments, the students have also been under a change.

Private labels have been increasing a lot during the last 30 years. The reason is great margins and it also works as an aid to build a store's brand. The problem is that private labels take market shares from national brands. Retailers need to have a good mix between these products and adopting category management without being influenced by opportunism, which can lower the profitability of a category. The purpose of this study is to examine and describe how private labels are prioritized in the category edible fat.

In this paper we investigate 67 Swedish buyouts in the manufacturing and retailing sector between the years 2004-2012. The purpose is to measure changes in a set of financial key ratios to see if private equity firms are able to improve performance in their portfolio companies compared to a peer group consisting of other firms within the same industries. Furthermore, we examine if there is a difference in the change of the financial key ratios between private equity-owned firms in the two sectors. The key results are that the private equity owned firms have not outperformed their peers with respect to the chosen key ratios. We also conclude that there is no significant difference in the change of the financial key ratios between private equity-owned firms in the two sectors..

Banks are an important institution for the economy of a society. During the later years the world of banking has changed. Several new actors have entered the market and taken over traditional bankservices as well as new ones. The way of conducting banking has changed with the event of new technology. One of the banks customer segments, the students have also been under a change. With a changed market companies have to adapt to the new rules of the game.

The concept of a Sharia compliant financial system has been a frequently discussed topic among scholars, bankers and media since the 1960th. It origins from the prohibition of interest, riba, which is stated in the Quran. Islamic banking is spread across the Muslim world and also exists in some western countries. This paper will try to create an image of what Islamic banking is in theory and in practice. This will be done by looking into the different methods of interest free banking, the Quran and the annual reports of four Islamic banks in different countries.

The retail banks are usually looked upon as conservative. Since the launch of internet banks in the 90's they have not developed much. Meanwhile the internet is developing in a fast pace and social websites are increasing in popularity. The purpose of this essay was to investigate how internet banking will develop in the near future based on interviews, literature and trend studies. With web 2.0 techniques the internet bank could develop to help the costumers take more informed decisions regarding their economic situation.

This study aims to build a deeper understanding on how shareholder value is created in Private Equity investments, especially during the holding period. The study is a qualitative study of the buyout of the access security company Bewator AB made by the Swedish Private Equity firm EQT in 2002. The buyout became highly successful due to various reasons. The study draws the conclusion, contrary to popular belief, that Private Equity firms create value through taking a long term view on business developing rather than being short term value destroyers. Incentive alignment is another important factor..

Media has in the last year been dominated by news about the current financial crisis around the world. For the banking system in Sweden the crisis began to show in the beginning of 2008 and there where a lot of speculations about how serious the crisis would be and it?s consequences. In several aspects, the banks' situation in the current crisis, are linked to the banking crisis in the 1990s. Although these crises have had different break-out reasons, there are several parallels between these crises to be drawn.

This thesis examines the possible beneficial effects of a temporary cooperation between a national brand and a private brand. The main hypothesis suggests that if a national brand wants to make a category extension to a remote product category, it should be able to decrease its risk by affiliating itself with a private brand. The national brand should through such a brand alliance be able to borrow some of the flexible characteristics that a private brand possesses to increase its associations with the new category. The survey consisted of 800 questionnaires with different cooperations between a private brand (ICA) and two national brands (Tropicana and Bravo). These were handed out to students in the universities of Stockholm.