Background: In 1999 the Swedish pension system was reformed with an aim to create a stable and high return on pension assets. First, Second, Third and Fourth general pension funds, hereby referred to as AP1-AP4, had an important part in the reform. AP1-AP4, also called the buffer funds, was assigned to secure long-term, big parts of the pension capital. The funds objective is by law, to manage the fund's assets in a manner that provides maximum benefit for the state pension. The funds will also invest pension assets with an overall low level of risk while achieving a sustainable high return.Aim: The purpose of this study is to investigate whether the First-Fourth AP-Funds is meeting its objectives regarding risk and return according to Swedish law.

The general pension supplement introduced in 1960 which introduced the public pension funds in Sweden. In the late 1990s the Swedish pension system was reformed and established the current structure. Today, funds are one of the most common forms of savings in Sweden and mutual funds are the most common type.The purpose of this study is to analyze the risk-adjusted returns for the AP funds in the period 2003-2009. Study was based on five funds that are most similar and have the same mission. These funds are AP1, AP2, AP3, AP4 and AP7.The method used in this study is mainly based on a survey of the figures and measurable units of statistical methods that have been carried out by a quantitative approach.

In the future the Swedish pension system will face major problems. With an increasing aging population combined with a decreasing share of working population the financing of the pension system is becoming a bigger problem than previously predicted. This means the individual himself will have a bigger responsibility to invest money for their future retirement. It has been shown that a large proportion of the people who invests for their future pension have neither the interest nor the time to actively invest their pension capital. To make it easier for those who invest for their retirement, some Swedish banks have created so-called generation funds.

In the future the Swedish pension system will face major problems. With an increasing aging population combined with a decreasing share of working population the financing of the pension system is becoming a bigger problem than previously predicted. This means the individual himself will have a bigger responsibility to invest money for their future retirement. It has been shown that a large proportion of the people who invests for their future pension have neither the interest nor the time to actively invest their pension capital. To make it easier for those who invest for their retirement, some Swedish banks have created so-called generation funds.

Background: Mutual funds have become an important part of the Swedish deposit market. Savings in mutual funds add up to almost 20 percent of the households'assets. When the pension reform is carried out all employees are going to have savings both in mutual and bond funds. But only if the fund overperforms the market it is worth investing. Purpose: The purpose of this study is to explore if Swedish mutual funds have generated higher returns than market portfolio in the late nineties.

The first four AP-funds have a well-diversified Swedish portfolio, which is managed in similar way as the largest Swedish bank funds. Up until today, there has not been any comparable study that focuses specifically on this part of the AP-funds. Our aim is two-folded; First we will look at how well the AP-funds have managed their Swedish assets compared with Swedish funds of the four largest banks in Sweden during 2002-2006. This will be done by looking at some important key ratios and both absolute and active return. Secondly we will present a descriptive analysis of the management structure within the respective organisations, to be able to draw conclusions regarding the possible deviations in investment return.

A reforming trend is captured showing that countries are shifting from defined benefit pension systems towards defined contribution systems. The reforms have been justified through predictions that the defined benefit systems will not manage to provide good enough pensions to members in the future. The newer defined contribution pension plans often include individual financial accounts where individuals have the possibility to choose how a part of their pension savings should be invested. Sweden was early to introduce such a system, which at the moment provides more than 800 funds to choose from. The aim of this thesis is to capture the market risk associated with these individual investments and does so by using Monte Carlo simulations for six selected pension funds.

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to examine the difference in return between Swedish and Russian hedge funds while considering the risk taken.Method: This study is based on quantitative data on funds' historical returns from the electronic database Morningstar.se. Additional data is taken from the funds websites, the Swedish National Bank and Fondbolagens förening.Result and conclusion: All hedge funds, both the Russian and Swedish performed better thanthe index. The Russian hedge funds nevertheless performed better than their Swedishcounterparts in all three evaluation methods..

This paper investigates the relationship between dividends and institutional and foreign ownership in Swedish firms. We use a dataset which covers the Swedish stock market over the period 1999-2009. The institutional ownership is defined as mutual funds, pension funds and insurance companies and these are analysed separately. The study confirms the expected positive relationship between the level of institutional investors in a firm and the size of dividends. We also confirm? the expected negative relationship between foreign investors and the size of dividends paid by Swedish firms.

Interest for Mutual funds has been enormous in Sweden and since 1970 has savings increased from 300 million SEK to about 900 billion SEK. An important reason for this increasing is the strong development of the stock markets has got and, the impairment of the public pension and the increasing of necessity of the private saving..

Today, there is no uniform definition of what an ethical fund is. Fund management companies choose themselves what they believe is ethical and not. The lack of the definition makes it difficult for consumers to understand why these funds are special compared to other funds. The purpose of this study is to examine three Swedish companies; KPA Pension, Swedbank Robur and Folksam, to obtain a clearer picture of the concept ethical funds and its definition. The study describes each company's view of Ethics and how they may affect other companies to work for a more sustainable world.

Today, there is no uniform definition of what an ethical fund is. Fund management companies choose themselves what they believe is ethical and not. The lack of the definition makes it difficult for consumers to understand why these funds are special compared to other funds. The purpose of this study is to examine three Swedish companies; KPA Pension, Swedbank Robur and Folksam, to obtain a clearer picture of the concept ethical funds and its definition. The study describes each company's view of Ethics and how they may affect other companies to work for a more sustainable world.

AbstractThe purpose of this thesis has been to investigate if the Swedish legislation concerning taxation of dividends to foreign investment funds is in violation to EU law. Furthermore, the thesis will analyze if the Fondskatteutredningens suggestions to changes in the current legislation is appropriate to the purpose it tries to obtain.Today there is a difference in the taxation of dividends paid to Swedish investment funds and foreign investment funds. Dividends paid to foreign investment funds is being taxed in accordance with the Coupon Tax Act (1970:624), in which no deduction of the tax is possible. Swedish investment funds on the other hand have the possibility to deduct as much of the received dividends that they have given in dividends to its shareholders.The difference in the taxation between investment funds because of origin has been reviewed by both Swedish court and by the European Court of Justice. It has in these cases been up to the courts to review if a difference in taxation of dividends could constitute a violation of the free movement.

The main purpose of the study is to investigate Sweden's four large banks, concerningrisk and return, to see if there are any differences between them. The paper will alsoinvestigate the following sub sections: are there any differences in how the banks havesucceeded in managing geographically targeted funds and if there are any differencesin how funds are performing according to the fund size.The study is based on a quantitative method and has a deductive approach. Theselection consists of all of the four banks Swedish and Nordic funds (according tomorningstar.se 's categories "Sverige" and "Norden"). The study is based on secondarydata gathered from sources such as Morningstar, Affärsvärlden, Dagens Industri andthe Swedish National Banks websites.Swedbank Robur has performed the highest results in the case of Swedish funds.Handelsbanken has performed the highest results in the case of Nordic funds and thetotal of all funds that are in the study. Based on the results of the study it was possibleto distinguish a link between fund size and the annual return. .

There are various investments to suit different investors, what affects the investor is the risk he/she takes with the investment and also the awareness  the investor has. According to different theories a higher risk gives even a higher yield to compensate for the extra risk the investor takes.In this paper, we discuss and compare two different forms of savings, Swedish closed-end funds and Swedish mutual funds to examine what alternative that generates highest returns in relation to the risk.To help, we use different evaluation measures that adjusts the different investments risk so that you can compare how well the investments have performed regardless of the risk they have. This will give us an answer about what investment form that have performed the best between 2002.01.01-20010.12.31. Five Sweden mutual funds and five closed-end funds have been selected to participate in the survey.To evaluate this, it is primarily quantitative data, analyzed in the evaluation measures. The results obtained in the survey show that Swedish closed-end funds have performed far better during the selected time period.