Assignment Task Report [100 Marks] [4500-5000 Words]
Read the following Scenario and prepare a Formal Business & Financial Review Document with the guidelines provided.
Scenario:
The assignment below will help you to review and critically analyze financial and management accounting principles, relevant accounting standards/ policies applicable, and apply the relevant knowledge to evaluate the overall business and management performance based on the current complex, volatile, competitive, and uncertain economic/business environment by reviewing their impact on businesses.
You are required to present a Formal Business Report, that would contain a neatly designed Table of Contents to capture the main and sub-topics in an orderly fashion which should adhere to meeting the assessment standards and grading criterion:
Required: Choose a public listed corporation related to your current work domain or preferred area of industry. Questions below would require candidates to research relevant financial and operational performance of the organization by reviewing and understanding the 2019 & 2020 Annual Reports on the chosen public listed company. The facts and figures will help the candidate to answer below questions and validate with relevant statistics for analysis or examples (wherever applicable).
1. Introduction [500 words]: Introduce the organization in the context of prevailing macro-economic and business conditions by discussing the vision, mission, and planning strategies of the company. For the chosen organization, evaluate the financial and operational performance of the organization by reviewing the company’s annual performance (Use financial data/annual report of the company for the year 2019 and 2020 for specific information) [10 Marks]
2. Financial Principles and Bottom-Line impact [1000 words]: Demonstrate meaningful understanding of accounting policies and accounting standards by critically reviewing academic and non-academic literature pertaining to its implications on the financial and macro-environment. Critically debate the use/ misuse of financial data in the practice of management accounting and financial accounting.
Discuss how a plan and its execution can lead to a respectable competitive financial management in the chosen company. (Students can use financial and strategic information of the chosen company to validate their explanations). [25 Marks]
3. Ratio Analysis & Financial Interpretations [1500 words]: For the question below use financial data for FY 2019 and 2020:
Calculate two ratios for liquidity, profitability, activity, capital structure and growth which should be critically interpreted and evaluated by comparing each ratio between the chosen organization and the industry benchmarks. Critically discuss how the external operating environment can impact the financial performance of this chosen company.
Finally, evaluate and recommend future strategies which will improve organizational sustainability. [25 Marks]
4. Budgeting Practices [1000 words]: Carry out a critical analysis which exhibits a suitable understanding of current issues/concepts that are relevant for investigating existing practices of ‘Traditional Budgets’ versus ‘Modern Age’ types of alternative budgeting techniques in large corporations.
Contextualize these budgeting approaches which can lead to enhancing operational performance, by linking them to the overall operational strategies & decision-making of the companies.
Review the impact of ‘smarter’ technologies performance in the overall budgeting processes, when examining forecasting and management control processes. (Students may use examples from chosen organization) [20 Marks]
5. Investment Appraisal Techniques [700 words]: If you were a director of a public listed company and had to present a significantly high value capital expenditure proposal to the CEO, how would you critically evaluate investment appraisal techniques that remain important when seeking an approval from the CEO. Evaluate at least two popular investment appraisal techniques that can be used & considered by managers/decision-makers in the light of dynamic business & economic conditions. (Examples/data from the chosen organization can be used to support the explanations.)
Any capital expenditure involves protecting shareholder interests & maintaining a careful balance between risk and rewards, using the concept of ‘time value of money’, to study the impact of choices between discounted cash flows and non-discounted cash flow methods. Therefore, conduct a discounted and non-discounted cash flow analysis. [15 Marks]
6. Presentation & References: You should present the whole document in methodical manner and should remain aligned to appropriately demonstrate correct application of the Harvard Referencing System (HRS)
Harvard Referencing should be maintained throughout of the assignment
