Magister Legum - LLM

The aim of this PhD thesis is to analyze the history and current situation of hedge funds and assess their potential to destabilize financial markets. The findings of the analysis are used to validate the assumptions underlying the major regulatory changes of hedge funds in the key global economic centres after the financial crisis in 2008 and 2009. Since their inception early last century hedge funds have gone through a period of great expansion in the sixties, followed by a decline due to large losses sustained in the early seventies. The nineties meant a real breakthrough for hedge funds as a result of which they became prominent players in the alternative investment space. As of today, there is over ten thousand hedge funds that globally manage close to 3 trillion US dollars. Compared to mutual funds and other financial institutions the volume of assets under management is still relatively small, the rate of growth over the past fifteen years has however been very significant. What is emphasized with respect to the impact of hedge funds on financial markets is the contribution to increasing the liquidity and efficiency and their role on the financial derivatives market where hedge funds are actively involved in the transfer of risk. They are at the same time subject of criticism for their purported destabilizing effect on financial markets and contribution to fluctuations in the prices of investment instruments. Although the share of hedge funds in triggering major financial crises has not been conclusively established, these investment entities were one of the targets of the wide-ranging regulatory changes following the financial crisis of 2008 and 2009. The dissertation first discusses the history and current situation of hedge funds and defines the term hedge fund. The following section describes the basic characteristics and principles of their functioning and reviews the regulation in the major domiciles. The final chapter is focused on the empirical analysis of the impact of hedge funds on financial markets. The inputs for this analysis include a global hedge fund index and representative market indices and data from the CFTC on positions in the 10 year US government treasury note futures. In the first step the descriptive statistics for the transformed time series are presented. The second part of the analysis focuses on lagged correlations between returns and volatility of the global hedge fund index and representative market indices. Granger causality tests are applied in the following section to determine the relationships between the returns and volatility of hedge fund and representative market indices. In the final step of the analysis Granger causality tests are used to analyze the link between the changes in positions in the 10-year US treasury note futures held by hedge funds and the change in settlement prices of these futures with the aim to assess whether hedge funds have the capacity to move the market. In conclusion, the results of this analysis are discussed in light of the recent regulatory changes and the potential for the future growth of hedge funds is assessed.

BAKGRUND: Investeringssektorn för privata investerare har i takt med digitalisering transformerats. Nya investerare lockastill aktiemarknaden genom ökad fritid, FoMO och TINA.Storamängderinformationhar visat sig varasvårhanterligför en oerfaren investerare vilket resulterar i att investeraren gör fler misstag.Det är därmed naturligt att oerfarna söker sig till erfarna för att utvecklas, i detta fall på sociala medier. Professionellainvesterare lyckasintesystematiskt överavkastamarknadenöver tid. Utöver detfinns inga belägg för att den kollektiva gruppen genererar en överavkastning.Detta väcker frågan om vilket värde deltagandet i investeringsgrupper ger investerare. SYFTE:Syftet med denna studie är att undersöka investerares perspektiv av investeringsgrupper på sociala medier och hur de reflekterar kring investeringsgruppernas inverkan på deras investeringsbeslut. Samt analysera hur deras perspektiv och reflektioner relaterar till deras erfarenhet och tidigare forskning. METOD:Studiens forskningsmetod är kvalitativ.Tio semi-strukturerade intervjuer har genomförts med investerare som har varit eller är medlemmar iinvesteringsgrupper samt har noll till fem års erfarenhet av aktiehandel. SLUTSATS:Studiensresultat finner att investerare som ingått i studiensöker sig till investeringsgrupper på sociala medier för att observera andra medlemmars åsikter.Resultaten indikerar även att investerare ökar sin kompetens i att hantera informationen i investeringsgrupperna. Studien finner även tendenser för investeringsgruppernas påverkan påurvaletsinvesteringsbeslut.Därav föreslås en egenutveckladinformationshanteringsmodellför att förklara hur urvalet kan tänkas processa informationen de utsätts för. / BACKGROUND: The private investment sector has seen a transformation as a result of digitization. Increased spare time, FoMO, and TINA attractsnew investors to the stock market.For an inexperiencedinvestor, large amounts of information have proven difficult to handle, resulting in the investor making more mistake. Therefore,it is only reasonable for the inexperienced to seek help from experienced to develop, in this case on social media. Professional investors have not been able to consistently outperform the market over time.Furthermore, no evidence exists that the collective group can do it better. This raises the question of what value investment groups could provide investors. AIM: The purpose of this thesisis to examine investors perspectives oninvesting groups on social media and how investing groups affectstheir investment decisions. In addition, thethesiswill examine how their perspectives and reflections are related to previous studies and their experience. METHOD: Tofulfill the study's purpose, thethesis wasconducted usinga qualitative research method. Investors with zero to five years of stock trading experience were interviewedin ten semi structuredinterviews. CONCLUSION: The results of the study find that investors who have been included in the study mainly seek out investment groups on social media to observe other members' opinions. The findings also suggest that investors improve their ability to handle information in investment groups overtime. The analysis also identifies tendencies in the influence of investing groups on respondents' investing decisions. As a result, a self-developed information management model is offered to describe how the sample might process the information they are exposed to.

The diploma thesis deals with the financial analysis of European joint stock companies in the pharmaceutical sector in order to expand the investment portfolio of a field-oriented fund of qualified investors. Selected companies are subjected to financial analysis by selected ratios. Based on these data, they are compared with each other by the method of intercompany comparison according to specified weights and verified in terms of their possible bankruptcy. With the help of these outputs, a proposal to expand the fund's investment portfolio is subsequently formulated.

Thesis title: territorial development contracts The topic of this diploma thesis is territorial development contracts. This term includes contracts for planning and assessment of the owners of the public transport and technical infrastructure resulting from Building Act and contracts not regulated by the law, concluded as so-called innominate contracts according to Civil Code, which are referred to as "cooperation agreement with person interested (investor) in construction". The essence of these contracts is the effort to adjust the financial participation of the person interested in the realization of the building project in the municipality on the costs incurred by the municipality caused by construction. In particular, it is mostly about compensation of the funds that the municipality must spend to ensure its functioning as a result of the increase in population and their entitlements. The beginning of thesis is dedicated to the definition of basic concepts and subjects. Furthermore, it outlines the reasons and general basis leading to the conclusion of territorial development contracts. Following is a closer analysis of contracts under the Building Act, on which the idea of the responsibility of the person interested in the construction of the costs associated with the construction is based. In...

Background: For the past 30 years, the neoclassical finance has been questioned bybehavioural finance. The main difference is behavioural finance ́s ability to explain a behaviour that deviate from rationality. One of the major biases within behavioural finance is overconfidence. Overconfident behaviour describes an investor with too strong belief in their own ability. This bias is not well-examined within behavioural finance in Sweden. The consequences of overconfidence are the investor ́s overvaluation skills which in turn leads to unnecessary risk-taking, excessive trading and economic losses. Purpose: The purpose of this thesis is to investigate if the overconfident bias exists among Swedish private investors. A study if the demographic factors; gender, age, marital status, education, and experience effect the level of overconfident behaviour. Further, an investigation to identify industries overconfident investors prefer or despise. Method: Our study use a deductive approach with a quantitative research. From the basis of previous studies, five hypotheses explaining a relation between demographic factors and overconfidence have been formulated. The data is collected through an online survey, published in finance forums between 2020-03-10 to 2020-03-22 which gave 233 participants. A binary logistic model was performed in STATA to examine if the hypothesis should be rejected or not. Conclusion: The findings from our study show presence of overconfidence among Swedish private investors. Statistically significant results confirm that gender, age, education, and experience have an impact on overconfident behaviour. Men are more overconfident than women, younger investors act more overconfident, higher education increase overconfidence, and more experienced investors are more overconfident.

The real estate industry is a sector where the companies generally have a capital structure which is high leveraged. The financing – with the related terms – is therefore specifically of high importance for the companies in the sector. Traditionally, the way of obtain financing is by borrowing from the bank. Lately, due to new bank regulations, the banks have become more restrictive in their lending which have lead to a growth of other financing alternatives. For instance, the corporate bond market has grown rapidly. The development has increased the number who acts as lenders. Institutional investors are for an example an actor which invests in corporate bonds. Furthermore, the credit rating agencies plays indirectly an important role in the financing process since their credit ratings are a part in the process of determining the terms. The terms (such as the interest rate) of the financing are mainly based on the credit risk of the company. Since the topic is of big importance and the financing for real estate companies is changing, the main focus is to create further knowledge and understanding regarding the assessments of the credit risk by each actor.  The present thesis shows the credit risk assessment process by each actor where the banks and the credit rating agencies have the most clear framework. The banks and the agencies do a deep assessment which then is discussed in "committees" internally to reach the final assessment.  The investor’s combines own analyses with evaluating earlier credit analysis done by a credit rating agency or a financial advisor in a corporate bond issue.

Background: Acquiring capital is a crucial component for developing countries to strengthen their economies and gathering it solely through national channels is challenging. Public-private partnerships allows for foreign capital to fund projects aimed at developing infrastructure through private investors. Yet, the topic of how to attract investors to public-private partnerships is largely unexplored.   Purpose: The purpose of this study is to investigate how investors with different levels of experience perceive attributes of public-private partnerships in developing countries. Furthermore, to add to the current body of knowledge of the topic, as it is limited to investors with extensive experience. Thus, we investigate investors with a range of previous knowledge and their observed preferences regarding investment opportunities.  Method: This bachelor thesis is written in accordance with a positivist approach where quantitative data was extracted through a questionnaire from 31 individuals with different investments experience. The results are later analysed in terms of mean value, standard deviation, multivariate multiple regression analysis and p-value approach. The data is later discussed in terms of relevance, connection to literature and in context to the frame of reference.    Conclusion: The results gathered in this thesis showcased that 3 out of 14 factors indicated a statistical significance. Which refers to that the level of investor experience influence how the individual investor perceives adequate local expertise, political support and acceptance of PPPs and capabilities of the developing country. This on the other hand also represents the overall homogenous perception and assumption regarding various factors of PPPs in developing countries from an experienced and inexperienced investors perspective. Moreover, this study provides additional knowledge and literature background regarding how investor experience influence perception on various factors associated with PPP markets in developing countries.

Tanzania is developing and their small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) can support economic, social, and technological development. Foreign direct investments (FDI) help Tanzania to sustain its businesses financially. How Tanzanian SMEs perceive the dependence on other countries' investors is unclear. This research analyzes whether and if so when investors should inject capital into SMEs as a minority or majority shareholder according to the SMEs’ perception. Nine semi-structured interviews with representatives of the Nordic/East African investor MTI Investment and four of their Tanzanian subsidiaries as well as a thematic analysis were conducted. The findings show that if the manager of the Tanzanian SME is the founder of an established SME, minority shareholders offer expertise and capital while still being in control of the business operations. An exception is when investors enter the business in the start-up phase. Then, a majority shareholder can help out better with their resources and can develop the business together with the manager. Majority shareholders are also appreciated when the leading CEO is not an entrepreneur. Then a strategic partner who injects capital and offers their skills to help out in all situations is perceived the most helpful for Tanzanian SMEs. Furthermore, the Tanzanian regulations are mostly supportive and through a visible change in opening Tanzania for FDIs, more investors are attracted. Further research is needed to see whether the perception changes over time.

A central topic in behavioural finance is extensive trading. One of the most common behav- ioural explanations for this phenomenon is overconfidence. In finance, overconfident traders feel that their information is sufficient to justify a trade even though it is not. Investors who consider themselves to be above average in their level of expertise show higher trading volumes. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the trading volume in the financial markets increased significantly. Further, young and inexperienced traders entered financial markets and volatility increased. Overconfidence could provide explanations for some of these financial market particularities. The study of Glaser and Weber (2007), which investigates the correlation of overconfidence and trading volume, lays the foundation for this study. We extend their research with a survey testing the degree of overconfidence and trading volume during COVID-19. The central aim of the thesis is to investigate to what extent overconfidence influences the trading volume during the COVID-19 pandemic. The analysis is unable to show a significant positive effect of overconfidence on the trading volume during COVID-19. But our research supports the findings that younger and inexperienced traders entered the market during 2020, who are on average more overconfident than experienced traders. The results further show that retail investors with more than two years of trading experience have significantly increased their trading volume during COVID-19. The analysis also provides evidence that during the COVID- 19 pandemic, traders who assign themselves above average within their investment skills traded significantly more.