Cautious optimism for the Swedish economy

Like several of its counterparts, the Swedish stock exchange went in to the holiday season slightly up, despite business in general being slow.

• Swedish economy beats growth expectations (29 May 13)
• Sweden's economic mood dips: survey (24 May 13)
• Warning over 'long-term' Swedish export slump (21 May 13)

When the stock market closed on Friday, the OMXS Index had risen by 1.1 percent.

The construction giant Peab ended on a high, having announced a huge commission to build a new shopping centre.

Shares in Peab rose by 9.4 percent after revealing it had won the the commission to build the Mall of Scandinavia shopping centre, next to the new National Arena in Solna in Stockholm, in a deal worth around 3.5 billion kronor ($0.5 bn).

Another firm ending on a bright note was Eniro. The directory assistance company which bought parts of the recently bankrupt Yellow Pages in Denmark for 27 million kronor, saw shares increase by 7.2 percent.

Meanwhile, more encouraging news from the US, notably the lowest unemployment statistics for over three years, had a knock-on effect for the major currencies in Europe.

In other business news, the number of new companies registered in Sweden in 2011 was up seven percent on 2011. According to a survey carried out by software company Visma, some 63,000 new organisations were registered.

According to Svenska Dagbladet, most were limited company or sole proprietorship and the areas seeing the biggest growth in new start ups were Jämtland, Halland and Värmland.

The municipalities registering the fewest new companies were Kronoberg and Kalmar.

In terms of age, the largest increase of new company owners were in the age groups of those under 25 and over 65.