The first of January 2005 all companies listed on a stock exchange within the European Unionhad to implement International Financial Accounting Standards (IFRS) in their annual report.But is this regulation for the good or worse and does the benefits outweigh the cost? The goalwith the regulation is to make it easier for investors, shareholders and other stakeholders tomake financial decisions, compare domestic as well as international companies at the samecondition. One of the differences with the introduction of the new regulation is IFRS 3 thathandles business combination and how goodwill and intangible assets from the acquiredcompany should be accounted for. The objectives of our dissertation is to identify those listedcompanies that have made one or more acquisition between the years 2005 to 2006 andmeasure their level of disclosure concerning goodwill and intangible assets through theacquisition. We concluded trough the results that positive accounting theory and systemorientated theory didn?t explain all the verities in the companies? disclosures.

Background: The devolopment in the exchange market has attract a large number of investors. The information flow is extensive and it might be hard to follow the dynamic market. Some investors therefore choose to place their capital in a stock portfolio which is manged by a professional firm with no influence from the capital owner, this management is called discretionary managing. Purpose: the purpose of the thesis is to examine the working methods and the rationality regarding the management of the discretionary portfolios. The purpose is also to try to examine whether there is a relation between the selected risk, return and fees.

Since year 2005 the accounting has changed for public companies because of the new international standards, IFRS. IFRS 3 provides a single international accounting treatment for acquisitions and has broadened the definition of intangible assets. By IFRS 3 goodwill is defined as the excess of the cost of acquisition and is separated from intangible assets. Now goodwill must be annually tested by an impairment test. There are many valuation issues to considerate when it comes to deciding the value of goodwill.

Year 1996 a new law was introduced in Sweden, the law of corporate restructuring, what purpose was to help companies in financial distress. Now, nine years later the procedure hasn?t been successful. This is what this thesis is trying to find out.This thesis main question is: What distinguishes the companies that have filed for a corporate restructuring, according to the financial position?The purpose of this thesis is to find out if key ratios can be used to distinguish the companies that filed for corporate restructuring.

Optimizing energy systems is, in Sweden, as in many other countries, of growing interest. District heating systems are no exception. In 2012, 285 out of 290 municipals in Sweden had district heating in use and the majority of these systems have a higher return temperature than that which is possible with an error-free substation of day current technology. To, when possible, lower the return temperature is a way of increasing the effectiveness of the district heating system.This study means to investigate, through simulations and calculations, how big of a reduction in production cost a lower temperature in the city of Ystad?s district heating system would correspond to.

Background: The Stop rule for buying in property was introduced through 1976 years legislation and its formemost purpose was to prevent companies to acquire property that was useless for the company. Assets such as cars, boats and arts were of current interest. At the same time as this stop rule was introduced, another stop rule was also introduced and this was meant to work to forbid the partner to buy property from the close company to a price that would lead to sell at loss for the company. After a government decision (1999:2000, Abolished Stop rules) the close company is no longer living under this restriction since these two stop rules have been abolished since January 2001. Purpose: The purpose of this thesis is to investigate which criteria are the basis to judge whether the assets is to consider as useful or not for the close company.

Assessment of impacts on nature and reindeer husbandry by the considered mountain road between Borgafjäll and Saxnäs- Swedish National Road and Transport Research Institutes method for assessment of damage to heritage assetsThere are plans regarding the building of a new road from Borgafjäll/Båtas to Saxnäs, and two road alternatives have been presented. The road has been localized to an area which is protected as a nature reserve and listed as a Nature 2000 area. This report aims to determine the effects on the Nature 2000 area and reindeer husbandry, and to be a source of knowledge for future environmental impact assessment in that project. In order to assess the impact on nature values and reindeer husbandry a method from the Swedish National Road and Transport Research Institute (VTI) has been used. A literature review has been made to prescribe the effects and consequences.

This paper deals with Iraqis in the Swedish labour market. The main goal was to point out on positive aspects of the Swedish labour market integration. Previous studies were mostly problem oriented on immigrants? situation in finding a job, especially when related to immigrant from non-European countries. Instead this study is focused on the more positive aspects.

Background: It is necessary for a company to hold some unique and irreplicable competitive advantage in order to be able to succeed in a market. In a market where public procurement is an important part the competitive advantages will be characterized by the fact that some of the participants on the market are public organizations and that their actions as for procurement fall under the legislation LOU. The characteristics of competitive advantage also depend on and change with continuous changes on a market. Purpose: The purpose of this thesis is to study the competitive advantages that are presenton a current market characterized by public procurement and how these are created. The purposes is also to based on the trends on the market today study and predict the nature of the competitive advantage on the market in the future as well as the changes that we think will occur on the relevant market.

In line with Sloan (1996) but on European data (STOXX 600) we are investigating whether stock prices reflect information about future earnings contained in the accrual and cash flow components. The extent to which current earnings performance persists into the future earnings performance is shown to depend on the relative magnitudes of the cash and accrual components of current earnings. Moreover, we still find a significant positive excess return (Jensen?s alpha and size-adjusted return) by replicating Sloans (1996) hedge portfolio by taking a long position in the stock of firms reporting relatively low levels of accruals and a short position in the stock of firms reporting relatively high levels of accruals. However, we find no evidence of negative excess returns for companies with relatively high accruals, this somewhat lower the total excess returns for all the portfolios.

In line with Sloan (1996) but on European data (STOXX 600) we are investigating whether stock prices reflect information about future earnings contained in the accrual and cash flow components. The extent to which current earnings performance persists into the future earnings performance is shown to depend on the relative magnitudes of the cash and accrual components of current earnings. Moreover, we still find a significant positive excess return (Jensen?s alpha and size-adjusted return) by replicating Sloans (1996) hedge portfolio by taking a long position in the stock of firms reporting relatively low levels of accruals and a short position in the stock of firms reporting relatively high levels of accruals. However, we find no evidence of negative excess returns for companies with relatively high accruals, this somewhat lower the total excess returns for all the portfolios.

Title: Valuing Real Estate FCFE and interest coverage under macroeconomic uncertainty with scenario analysisAuthors: Marcus Ewerstrand, Jakob MattssonAdvisor: Gert SandahlBackground and problem: After the collapse in the Swedish economy in the beginning of the 1990-ties, the company Secerum was launched. Securums objective was to handle unsecured credits from Nordbanken by transferring a large portfolio of properties and to setup a number of companies who would be in charge for the prospects of these assets. One company that was established during this remarkable period was Castellum, in the year of 1994. After a successful process of raising capital to its development of corporate strategies and formation of several affiliated companies which operates locally, Castellum was publish on the Stockholm stock exchange 1997/1998. Now, thirteen years later after its establishment, the credit crunch in the US.

A big part of assets in companies today consists of their employees knowledge and skills. In today?s society knowledge insensitive companies are increasing. The survival of these companies lie in the knowledge of their employees, which make it of great importance that knowledge transfer is managed properly. Knowledge transfer is important since it makes it possible for co-workers to apply old solutions to new problems that arise, using knowledge that already existing within the organization.

Agency theory describes the conflict of interest between the principal (stockholders) and the agent (CEO). Aligning the incentives of executives with those of the owners is the most direct way to mitigate the agency problem. If there is no meaningful link between CEO compensation and company performance, it is doubtful that the large sums of assets in public corporations are being managed efficiently. In theory the solution is simple reward the CEO when shareholders wealth increases. The purpose of this paper is to investigate if there is a relationship between company performance and CEO compensation among Swedish companies, in materials and information technology industry.

Purpose: The purpose of the study is to in a comparative and causal way explore whether there is a relationship between risk and return and also how it is perceived on the Nordic financial markets.Theory: The theoretical frame of reference applied in the thesis is considered relevant inthe perspective of the study?s purpose and research questions. We have among other theories used The Capital Asset Pricing Model, The Efficient Market Hypothesis and various Behavioural finance theories.Method: The study has its starting point in a quantitative approach with a quantitative data analysis supported by secondary data extracted from Thomson Reuters.Empirics: The empirics contains regression analyses made from calculated secondary data of 240 randomly chosen companies from Nasdaq OMX Stockholm, NasdaqOMX Copenhagen, Nasdaq OMX Helsinki and Oslo Bors.Conclusion: The study conclusions show that there are both a negative and positive relationship between volatility and actual return on the investigated markets. Considering this prior statement we can conclude that the Capital Asset Pricing Model can?t correctly describe the actual relationship between the parameters investigated on the current sample.