eThesis - School of Business electronic theses

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PURPOSE OF THE STUDY The purpose of the study is to investigate how the case company Sonera developed its investment story during 1999–2002, at the course of the dot-com bubble and UMTS acquisitions. In addition, the research examines how the events that occurred in and among Sonera explain the changes in the investment story development. During the dot-com bubble in the late 1990s and early 2000s, case Sonera was one of the most important and the most discussed events in Finland. The previous literature on investment story is mainly focused on textual analysis and the grounded theory based theoretical framework applied in this research has been built by examining companies under normal circumstances.

DATA Data set consists of Sonera’s interim and year-end reports, newspaper articles and seven interviews. The interim and year-end reports, 14 in total, are collected from the second quarter of 1999 to the third quarter of 2002. The newspaper articles are collected from Finnish financial papers and the main newspaper Helsingin Sanomat, and the articles contain straight quotations from Sonera’s management considering the events taken place during 1999–2002. The interviews were conducted to five of Sonera’s managers, one analyst and one prior board member. All interviewees were working for or otherwise linked to Sonera at the time of the crisis.

RESULTS The results show that the investment story can be investigated with the given framework despite the crisis environment. The results support the findings in previous literature. Each investment story component has an individual influence on the investment story and they can even mediate a contradictory story to the market. The event analysis shows that events chosen do have an impact on the investment story. Especially endogenous events create contradictory investment story.