Since the year 2005 listed companies are supposed to use international accounting standards when they set up their group accountancy. One thing that has changed with the new standards is the accounting of goodwill and long-lived intangible assets. Earlier companies were supposed to write of their goodwill during the years they had expected the extra profit to arise. According to the new regulation, an impairment test shall be done annually, as well as when there is an indication of decreased value. According to IAS 36 point 134, the company shall provide information in their accountancy about the impairment test.The aim of this study is to find out if some companies may be willing to reveal less information in their accountancy, and if there are any factors that affect this.

Title:Pecking-order i små tillverkande företag Level of thesis:Master´s dissertation in banking and auditing Authors:Mathias Klasén and Maria Waderoth Advisor:Joakim Winborg Background:The area of business financing has been well studied during the 1900´s. Many studies and theories are made with big corporations in mind, and the importance of small businesses wasn?t enlightened until the end of the 1900´s. Business financing has created a number of theories, among them Myers pecking-order theory. This theory implies that business managers prefer internal equity in front of debt and external equity.

Background to problem: Pensions play a big role in people's lives when life expectancy continues to increase. Companies can choose different ways of reporting their pension plans, and within the defined benefit pension plan poses the actuarial gains and losses that can be reported based on three different methods. Only one method will exist from 2013, how will the companies that use the other two handle the new situation?Purpose: Investigate why different companies have chosen to report its actuarial gains and losses along the corridor approach, directly against income or directly in equity. How will the companies that use the corridor method manage the situation when it will only be allowed to report in other comprehensive income as of 2013 and how will this affect them.Methodology: Data was collected through qualitative questionnaires sent to companies listed on Nasdaq OMX Nordic Stockholm, Large Cap and Mid Cap, and a qualitative interview.

Aim: The aim of this study is to do a comparative study between Swedish Ethical equity Funds with Swedish traditional equity funds in terms of return, risk and risk-adjusted return.Theory: Sharpe ratio and Modigliani-Modigliani.Method: The essay will be based on a quantitative research method in which secondary data is the basis for the calculations. A statistical analysis was applied.Conclusion: The study concludes that there is no significant difference between the ethical fund group and the traditional fund group in terms of return, risk and risk-adjusted returns. The traditional fund group was those who had the best returns but only by small margins..

Mezzanine is a collective term for hybrid instruments on the leverage finance market, offered as an alternative to traditional debt. As a hybrid, mezzanine combines elements of debt and equity financing. Mezzanine appears, in its most common shape, as subordinated to the senior debt, but ranks higher than pure equity. Reminiscent of security interests, the main importance of subordination is upon the default of the borrower. Therefore, the aim of the thesis is partly to investigate the legal prerequisites for a solid subordination of mezzanine financing, and partly to explain the consequences of subordination in a default.

This thesis examines how online fashion retailers utilize blogs and other social media in their marketing process. The study is focused on internet retailer Nelly and how they make use of fashion blogger Kenza in their marketing. Drawing on Kawamura?s fashion-ology theory, the study emphasizes the new role of the fashion bloggers in the fashion system, and illustrates their consumption power vis-a-vis the retailers, the consumers, each other and the whole industry as such.    .

The most vital for a business is to understand how to please and satisfy its customers in order to make them loyal to the company. Companies weapon for competition in the retail business is defined through the retail mix. The retailer however often have limited resources whereas they have to prioritize between the factors included in the retail mix. The main purpose for this paper is to investigate what kind of internal connections that may occur between the factors in the retail mix, with focus on the job satisfaction as a catalyst on driving the values of the parameters included in the retail mix, where the factor service is the starting shot for the others included..

Syftet med uppsatsen var att undersöka huruvida den riskjusterade avkastningen från en traditionellt förvaltad lång indexportfölj kunde ha varit högre om portföljen hade förvaltats enligt en Equity Market Neutral-strategi. Vidare ämnar undersökningen att testa huruvida de skapade portföljerna uppvisar låg korrelation, dvs marknadsneutralitet, med underliggande marknad som är förenligt med strategin. För detta ändamål används Svenska Handelsbankens Månatliga Modellportfölj mellan åren 1998-2003. Vidare är syftet att utifrån analysen av undersökningens resultat kunna dra slutsatser om det kan finnas information i traditionella långa indexportföljer, liknande Handelsbankens Modellportfölj, som kan öka den riskjusterade avkastningen men som inte utnyttjas och som skulle kunna tas till vara via implementeringen av en Equity Market Neutral strategi. Undersökningen visade att portföljerna uppvisade såväl högre absolut- som riskjusterad avkastning jämfört med modellportföljen, och låg korrelationen gentemot marknaden sett över hela den undersökta perioden.

Scania?s discount rate - the return requirement of investments - refers to Scania?s WACC or weighted average cost of capital. The capital markets return requirement on equity and the credit market interest cost of borrowing is weighted to become the single discount rate, the WACC. The purpose of this study is to investigate which asset pricing model of APT and CAPM Scania should use in their WACC calculations. The company now uses a group WACC of 11 percent which is used in all company levels.

In a time when economic crises relieving one another, it is especially interesting to study how companies choose to finance their operations. Since there is a lack of studies that include banks, and their capital structures, with the rest of the finance market, it is uncertain whether the theories of capital structure are applicable. Therefore, this essay aims to study whether there is any correlation between the two variables debt-equity ratio and return on equity (ROE) for Swedish corporations on the finance market.In accordance with the theorems that the professors Modigliani and Miller filed, in 1958 and 1961, which describes a clear link between debts, increase corporate value through the tax shield and indirectly increased yields. Although these theorems are the foundation of the modern research they focus on perfect markets. Therefore, this paper has also chosen to place great emphasis on theories such as Trade-off and Pecking-order.

The aim of this thesis is to investigate how a valuation model of a Private Equity firm is interpreted into a management control system within the company's different organizational levels. A case study was developed based on the infra-net company Eltel. The management control systems developed by Malmi and Brown (2008)(1) was used to characterize the control systems at each organizational level. The building blocks of this system are planning, cybernetic, reward/compensation, administrative and culture. Miller and O'Learys (2007)(2) theory of mediating instruments and technology roadmaps was applied to analyze the mediating process of the valuation model.

Since January 1st 2005 all companies listed on a regulated stock exchange within the European Union are required to present their financial reports in accordance with International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS). The intention of the introduction of IFRS is to achieve international harmonization of accounting rules in order to make financial reports more comparable between companies from different countries. The purpose of financial reports presented in accordance with IFRS is to provide information that is useful to the users of the information. The aim of this paper is to investigate whether the information regarding goodwill and the goodwill impairment test, presented in accordance with IFRS, in fact is useful to a specific group of accounting information users, namely equity analysts. An empirical study is conducted, based on interviews with seven Swedish equity analysts.

SummaryThe purpose of this thesis is to examine what effect the IFRS 2 has on earnings, equity, financial strength and return on equity for listed Swedish companies with active stock option plans. The purpose is further to investigate the companies? attitudes towards IFRS 2 and to find out if companies tend to deviate from stock option plans due to the changed accounting rules. We also want to examine the view of IFRS 2 from an auditor?s perspective.We have used a deductive approach and a mix of quantitative and qualitative research methods with a view to get a completely clear picture within the field of study.

This thesis examines underpricing and the long run performance of IPO firms on the Swedish equity market during 1994-2010. We further investigate whether any correlation exist between underpricing and post-IPO performance during 36 months. We use a sample of 80 IPO firms. To examine the aftermarket performance we compare total return of each firm with a matching industry index. In order to strengthen our analysis, we run a second test, comparing actual return for each firm with expected return, adjusted for firm specific risk.

The aim of this thesis is to describe the development of profitability and capital structure in Swedish quoted companies during the period of 1990 to 2004. Further, the aim is to determine the relationship between profitability and leverage in order to conclude whether the choice of capital structure supports the pecking order theory or the trade-off theory of capital structure. The findings show that return on assets fluctuates between 3 and 11 percent and that return on equity fluctuates between 3 and 22 percent during the period. Further, the leverage and the cost of debt have decreased. This indicates lowered financial risk in Swedish quoted companies in the period between 1990 and 2004.