<p><strong>Background:</strong> The reasons why this study is conducted is because of the latest recession in the global economy. The current recession has made a lot of companies more aware of its cost, and in order to fit the new harsher economic climate the companies has to be more cost efficient. In order to do so many companies choose to reduce their amount of employees. When this happens in a recession, most of the layoffs are an effect of reactive causes, such as lower incoming orders, and fewer customers. This leads to a problem for the companies that don’t know how these kinds of layoffs will affect the value of the company’s stock. This leads to a question whether there is a significant pattern between layoffs that are a result of reactive reasons and the number of employees that are being laid off, in percentage of the total number of employees of the companies in question?</p><p><strong>Purpose:</strong> The reason for this study is to find out if there is any correlation between how many employees that is laid off, in percentage of the company’s total employees, and if different percentages have different impact in the valuations of the company’s stock.</p><p><strong>Approach:</strong> This study is made in the form of a modified event study and narrows down to the recession during 2008-01-01 to 2009-10-01, and only involves companies that are on trade on the stock market in Stockholm Sweden. The objects that are involved in this study are from the stock markets large and mid-cap sections. The criteria for companies in this study are that they should have made layoffs for reactive reasons in the time period that we are interested in. The variations in the company’s stock are compared to Stockholm’s stock markets OMX-index. The information needed to conduct this study is gathered from press realises and from financial reports made by the companies.</p><p><strong>Result and conclusions:</strong> The study shows that there is a correlation between how large percentage of the company’s total employees that are laid off and the effect of variations in the stock. The correlation is -0,306 but it is not statistical verified. This result was not in line with our hypotheses that we had concluded from earlier research and theories that are in the study. Earlier research on the American stock market shows a stronger connection between large percentage layoffs and how this makes the stock value to decrease.</p>

No description available.

Bakgrund: Den 10 mars 2000 blev Sverige ett av de sista västländerna att tillåta noterade bolag att återköpa egna aktier. Intresset för denna nya möjlighet har varit stort bland svenska börsbolag och fram till idag har ett femtiotal bolag återköpt egna till ett värde av åtskilliga miljarder. Syfte: Syftet med uppsatsen är att studera hur ett bolags återköp av egna aktier påverkar aktiekursen. Genomförande: Vi har studerat litteratur och artiklar om ämnet återköp. Vi har undersökt 48 företags återköp och dess kursutveckling en månad efter avslutat återköp. En jämförelse har gjorts med respektive företags branschindex. Därutöver har vi även undersökt om det går att se någon mer långsiktig effekt från starten av respektive återköpsprogram till det att de avslutades i varje företag. Resultat: I knappt hälften av de undersökta bolagen fann vi att återköpen haft en positiv effekt på aktiekursen.

Transfers of joint stock companies can be executed in several ways - for example by transferring individual shares or by transferring all shares or by selling the company's assets and liabilities. It is not fully clear which rules should apply to transfers of joint stock companies. Some legal experts claim that the Sales Act (Köplagen) is applicable, while others claim that the rules for promissory notes (Skuldebrevslagen) should apply. This distinction is of great significance regarding the extent of the vendor's liability. According to Skuldebrevslagen the vendor's liability is rather limited, while Köplagen enjoins the vendor a more extensive liability.A transfer of a joint stock company brings about great economical risks, both for the vendor and for the purchaser. Therefore it has become customary to execute a so-called due diligence, before the actual purchase takes place. The concept of due diligence derives from Anglosaxon law and appears in Sweden since the 1990's. The purchaser is allowed to examine the company before the purchase. Normally the purchaser engages expertise to do the actual investigation, for example a law firm. An interesting question is to what extent the actual examiner (i.e. the lawyer) can be considered liable.

No description available.

The major aim of this thesis is to analyze the impact of structural change of exports and technology level on the international competitiveness. In order to analyze international competitiveness, export market shares are used. The empirical analysis suggested in this thesis includes two steps. In the first step, constant market share analysis is conducted to understand the causes of changes in export market shares from one period to another and in the second step a difference generalized method of moments model is proposed for 44 manufacturing sectors, which are classified with respect to their technology intensities, over 2003- 2008 period. The results are highly sensitive to the technology intensity of sectors.

Background: The reasons why this study is conducted is because of the latest recession in the global economy. The current recession has made a lot of companies more aware of its cost, and in order to fit the new harsher economic climate the companies has to be more cost efficient. In order to do so many companies choose to reduce their amount of employees. When this happens in a recession, most of the layoffs are an effect of reactive causes, such as lower incoming orders, and fewer customers. This leads to a problem for the companies that don’t know how these kinds of layoffs will affect the value of the company’s stock. This leads to a question whether there is a significant pattern between layoffs that are a result of reactive reasons and the number of employees that are being laid off, in percentage of the total number of employees of the companies in question? Purpose: The reason for this study is to find out if there is any correlation between how many employees that is laid off, in percentage of the company’s total employees, and if different percentages have different impact in the valuations of the company’s stock. Approach: This study is made in the form of a modified event study and narrows down to the recession during 2008-01-01 to 2009-10-01, and only involves companies that are on trade on the stock market in Stockholm Sweden. The objects that are involved in this study are from the stock markets large and mid-cap sections. The criteria for companies in this study are that they should have made layoffs for reactive reasons in the time period that we are interested in. The variations in the company’s stock are compared to Stockholm’s stock markets OMX-index. The information needed to conduct this study is gathered from press realises and from financial reports made by the companies. Result and conclusions: The study shows that there is a correlation between how large percentage of the company’s total employees that are laid off and the effect of variations in the stock. The correlation is -0,306 but it is not statistical verified. This result was not in line with our hypotheses that we had concluded from earlier research and theories that are in the study. Earlier research on the American stock market shows a stronger connection between large percentage layoffs and how this makes the stock value to decrease.

Background: Though small enterprises are regarded as engine for the modern economy, they are not pioneers when it comes to implementing new advances like tacit knowledge transfer procedures. Tacit knowledge is often referred as skill, know-how and expertise which are embedded in each individual in an organization. The critical skills and competences of employees are intangible assets and firms’ intellectual resources. In this context, the tacit dimension of knowledge is potentially important to be transferred among individuals, either in tacit or explicit form, to build the core capabilities of small enterprises. Problem Discussion: The existent Knowledge Management (KM) research has been mainly focused on big companies, providing little information for small enterprises. Authors believe the lack of attention that those small enterprises are putting on the strategic management of their knowledge is worrying. Tacit knowledge is one of the less explored areas within KM due to the difficulty to codify, formulate or express it. Despite this fact, it is perceived as “some kind of Holy Grail that will enable magnificent things to happen as soon as the codes of tacit knowledge have been deciphered”. Purpose: The purpose of this study is to increase the understanding of the transference of tacit knowledge among individuals within small segment of small enterprises. Method: To gather the information pertaining to tacit knowledge transfer in the small segment of small enterprises, authors have performed a qualitative and explanatory research by conducting several interviews with two small companies. Result: Tacit to tacit knowledge transfer has been identified as more relevant than tacit to explicit conversion in the small segment of small enterprises. Therefore the main drivers of the transference of tacit knowledge are learning at personal level and common culture. Time, cost and distance have been recognized as major problems for small enterprises when transferring tacit knowledge.

This paper examines the stock performance around initiation announcements of open market share repurchase programs, the price impact of repurchase trading and the long-run abnormal stock performance following the initiation announcements in a European regulatory framework. The study uses a unique dataset on initiation announcements and actual repurchases conducted by firms listed on the Stockholm Stock Exchange during the period 2000-2009. The results show that initiation announcements of open market repurchase programs exhibit a two-day abnormal return of approximately 2%. The price impact on the actual repurchase days is positively correlated with the daily repurchase volume, and is both statistically and economically significant during the first 3 repurchase days in a repurchase program. The long-run abnormal stock performance is positively associated with the fraction of shares bought in the program and is approximately 7% the first year following the initiation announcement. The results indicate that repurchase trading provides price support and that the market participants detect and perceive the initiation announcement and the first repurchase days in a repurchase program as a signal of undervaluation. / <p>QC 20130515</p>

We examine differences in market performance of Swedish firms that initiate repurchase programs infrequently (1-2 programs), occasionally (3-4 programs) and frequently (5 or more programs) over the period 2000-2009, and examine the relationship between abnormal return and repurchase size in repurchase months. We find that infrequent repurchase programs are greeted with a stronger positive reaction than occasional and frequent programs. However, over long term, infrequent repurchase programs show no abnormal return while occasional and frequent repurchase programs show a significant positive abnormal return. A positive relationship between abnormal return and repurchase size in repurchase months is documented on average for all types of repurchase programs. / <p>QC 20130515</p>