Abstract: Since the recession caught the market in fall 2008, multiple companies have suffered due to their former aggressive investment behavior. Huge goodwill piles have been collected ready to be doomed by the market. The aim of the study is to investigate equity analysts? consideration of goodwill in a recession market. An empirical study is conducted, based on interviews with ten Swedish equity analysts that follow companies with relevant goodwill status.

Mobile telecom and the Internet are converging, which opens new possibilities for market actors to create business through the mobile handset. At the same time market experts are predicting that mobile operator?s existing dominance in the telecom market will in the future decline as new technology such as VoIP and services will erode the operator?s traditional revenue model. This implies that mobile operators will need to rethink their dominant business logic to create new value for their customers. Mobile operators are aiming to expand their existing revenue model through advertising in the mobile handset and are searching to create new business models that evolve advertising sales.

We investigate if the size of goodwill compared to total assets has any effect on the shareholders return on companies listed on the Swedish Stock market. We put up two different hypotheses with a foundation from previous research and later dismiss one of them. Our evidence does not show any indicators that the size of goodwill have an effect on the shareholders return, which brings us to believe that there, from a share holders point of view, isn?t any need for concern regarding the standards about accounting for goodwill as stated by IFRS. .

This is a Master´s Thesis based on my own idea instead of that of a company. It is a survey that focuses on finding out more about which part of the development process that is blocking the establishment of electronic scorecards on the golf market. Why has it not been introduced on the market in a larger scale yet, considering the technology we possess today? This question is investigated through interviews with the Swedish Golf association, and three companies that have chosen different paths to implement an electronic scorecard. The interviews focuses on finding out what developers and the association believe to be the main problem, before taking the next step in releasing electronic scorecards on a larger scale.

The Internet has developed into a marketplace for national and international companies. With relatively small means, a company can reach out to millions of people on a daily basis by placing itself on the Internet. With this report, we wish to suggest how e-businesses can change its strategy to adapt to the new market. Focus is on the Swedish Internet market where Swedes, resident in Sweden, trades with Swedish e-companies active within the Swedish borders. To be able to make suggestions, we will first paint a picture of the Swedish e-commerce market from statistics collected from public sources.

Previous research has shown that the market reacts on stock recommendations. As the Internet has made financial information more available and cheaper to assess one could believe that the market reflects more available information today. If this is true the market will react less on recommendation made by journalists, which generally consists of processed public information. The stock market should thus be more efficient according to the efficient market hypothesis. This study examines initially if we can conclude that stock recommendations made by journalists generate returns above the expected returns, hence abnormal returns.

The international requirement of Swedish healthcare today is high and due to a good reputation and a long history of reliable methods through extended experience. For those Swedish companies within this business, the process of internationalization is often a attractive option.This study aims to describe, analyze and translate how minor Swedish companies within the care keeping section establish their business on the international market.The study is based upon a qualitative approach and is an empirical study carried out through semi-structured interviews.The result presented in the study shows that internationalization of companies within this business does often require a lot of time and money, is based upon establishments through networks and were learning-by-doing often is used as a strategic approach for the companies penetrating a new market.The study also accounts for major entry barriers, which declares for being to some part of political nature, but mostly of cultural nature.Differences in language and culture are shown in the study to be a major entry barrier and host-countries different cultural levels are very conclusive for the success of internationalization. .

Youth unemployement in Sweden is at an all-time high, a fifth of all university and college students live in poverty and the number of young on welfare is increasing. This study attempts to answer the question of how youth deprivation has been made possible as a consequence of political action, focusing on youth unemployment.I critically examine the role of the Swedish government, the Swedish Labour Organisation (LO), and the various government departments through text analysis, in order to answer the question of how the current discourse on youth position in the labor market. Because youth unemployment is not an isolated phenomena the analysis covers several policy areas, such as education policy, labor market regulation and housing policy. I use discourse theories drawn from Laclau and Mouffe to expose how language is used as an instrument of political power.I conclude that the current situation is a result of policy choices where the young have fallen behind due to lack of political organization. Their situation is not problematized to the required degree and is often explained on an individual level rather than on a structural level..

Background: Today many companies are competing to get space in our minds. Companies spend a tremendous amount of money on building strong brands. It is not just about making us aware of their logo, today it?s more about giving the brand a ?soul? and to load it with different values. Due to today?s globalization there is also interesting to look at it from a cultural perspective.

The purpose of this study is to examine what characterizes brand identity and positioning regarding festivals on the current Swedish festival market. In relation to our purpose we are also going to analyze how festival attendees relate to a festivals brand identity. Our research question is as follows:What characterizes festivals brand identity and positioning on the current Swedish festival market?This study has been written with a qualitative research method and an inductive approach. Our empirical foundation is built on a rich content based on personal interviews.

The market communication in organisations is vital to manage the competition. Studies have shown the importance of market communication in both private and public organisations.Since the past decade market communication has been acknowledged as an instrument to provide the organisations target group with valid information.This thesis is a study about the differences in market communication between private and public organisations. To manage this we asked ourselves the question:?- What distinguish the market communication in a private respective a public organisation??We have done qualitative interviews to get the best result for our study. We have interviewed both types of organisations and our respondents have leading strategic position in their organisations.Our research highlights important differences between private and public organisations in matter of tactics in market communication.In conclusion the result shows a great difference in how an organization is managing their communicative strategies all depending on if it is a private owned company or a public organisation..

This thesis describes and examines a new line of business, CleanTech. CleanTech comprises a wide range of different types of companies and is not yet well defined. In this thesis only the Swedish market is considered, and a variety of players on the market are included to give the most extensive picture of the current situation. Recent research shows that a gap has arisen between governmental financing and private equity-investments in CleanTech-companies. This gap occurs mainly in companies in expansive phases and causes problems both for the companies and for the line of business as a whole. To investigate this gap the Swedish CleanTech-business is described in terms of earlier and existing financing, age and size of the companies and their turnover and profit.

In this thesis we study the development of post-earnings announcement drift (PEAD) in the Swedish equity market from 2000 to 2009. By forming portfolios based on the stock price reaction to quarterly reporting we show that the characteristics of PEAD have changed. We demonstrate that negatively surprising companies show a positive drift during a holding period of six months sufficiently large to render the trading strategy unprofitable. This development holds from 2005 and onwards and these results contradict many a study which finds the same portfolio construction to be indeed profitable. We argue that this development is a trend that will not only affect our study but future studies as well..

The aim of this thesis is to examine the occurrence of Cosmetic Earnings Management (CEM) among Swedish companies. CEM refers to the small upward rounding of reported net income to reach cognitive reference points. Important cognitive reference points are multiples of ten (N*10^x) of reported net income and rounding towards these has been documented in other markets around the world over the last 20 years. The occurrence of CEM on the Swedish market is studied using digital analysis, frequency testing and Benford's law. Firstly, reported net income of publicly traded companies between 1996 and 2010 is examined.

The purpose of this master thesis was to explore and develop prototypes for visualization of trade statistics in a market surveilance application. In such an anapplication a large amount of information is processed. This information is then summarized and presented to the market surveillance staff. The practical part of this thesis was done at Scila AB in Stockholm. Three prototypes were developed based on modern visualization methods.