AAF044-6 Accounting and Finance Assignment Help

Introduction

This is an important component of the AAF044-6 and it represents 40% of the total assessment weighting for the unit. The broad aim of the assessment is to allow you to analyse financial data and other relevant information of an organisation and refer to relevant literature to form a judgement on the relative performance and the effectiveness of management in meeting the strategic corporate objectives in a given scenario. You must demonstrate that you can structure a programme of study, identify information needs, draw from the body of existing knowledge on a particular subject, compare theory with practice, construct reasoned arguments supported by evidence, and make logical conclusions, all within a context of an individual written submission and strict deadlines. The output of this Assignmentwork will be an individual written report.

You are strongly encouraged to visit the Professional and Academic Development (PAD) web site at http://lrweb.beds.ac.uk/studyhub for general help with preparing for assessments and access to a range of relevant additional on-line resources.

Assessment

Assessment is not just about ‘grading’ your performance but an integral and important part of your learning. Preparation for assessment, undertaking the set tasks and using the feedback provided helps you to develop and demonstrate skills as well as being able to evidence your knowledge and understanding.

Learning Outcomes:

1. Demonstrate a critical understanding and broad knowledge of financial statements and the concepts of corporate finance and investment appraisal in order to evaluate management decisions against strategic corporate objectives.
2. Analyse financial statements and evaluate management decisions through the application of relevant financial tools and techniques to assess their validity in achieving strategic corporate objectives.

The Assessment Task

Your assessment task is to investigate the issues surrounding the brief you have been given and to present your findings in a group oral presentation.

Assessment Brief:

You are to write a 2500 word report as though you were a consultant writing to the board of directors of a company considering embarking on a major new joint venture with Bellway Plc. The board want to assess the listed company’s performance over the past 3 years. Your report should cover the following:

• Background - Discuss the company’s corporate objectives and how these have changed over the past 3 years. Discuss the key opportunities and major problems that the company has encountered over the past 3 years and is now facing going forward.

• Evaluate the financial statements and other financial information relating to Bellway plc to assess how the company has performed over the past three years taking into account any problems or opportunities identified in (i). This should be an interpretation of the ratios NOT the calculation of the ratios.

Your Evaluation of the Financial Statements should include the following table:

• Discuss how the listed company’s performance over the past three years compares with its main competitors. Your answer should include a common size statement and some discussion as to whether the competitors identified faced the same opportunities and problems that listed company faced. How these were are reflected in the competitor’s financial statements.

• Conclusion - Discuss whether in your opinion the company the board should back a new joint venture with the listed company. You need to draw on your analysis discussed in (i), (ii) & (iii) above.

Your critique must be submitted in electronic form through BREO. Work not submitted on time will be treated as a non-submission.

Additional Instructions

Word limit is 2,500 words, excluding bibliography, references and appendices.

Additional Guidance and Instruction

Written Presentations

It is important to present your work correctly and learning to do so at an early stage, by consulting these guidelines, may save you time and trouble in the long run.

The report should be written according to the highest standards of English usage. The Oxford English Dictionary is recommended as the ultimate authority. Avoid the use of the first person in the main report. Conciseness of expression is expected and sentences should be constructed in order neither to be too long and convoluted, nor e-mail or texting style. Remember that quality is more important than quantity. Clarity is increased by adopting a logical order of presentation (especially regarding paragraphs or section headings).

Although spell checks are invaluable for detecting typing errors and the odd spelling mistake, they are no substitute in the end for careful proof reading. You cannot rely on a spell check which will not, for example, pick up mistakes which sometimes may be related to grammar (such as their/there) when these are in fact quite different words in the dictionary.

Careful editing is essential and it is sometimes difficult to detect mistakes in your own work with which you are familiar. You are strongly advised to persuade a friend or colleague to read through your work in its final form. It is not the task of your tutor to do this for you.

Numbers below one hundred in the main text are usually spelt out in full (e.g., sixty-five), as well as those which can be expressed in two words (three million); but 2,760 specimens, 516 students. Numerals should be used for dates (consecutive years should appear as 1992-93, not 1992-3 or 1992/93), street numbers, decimals, exact sums of money and percentages (with ‘per cent’ spelt out rather than %). Uniformity is important; mixtures of words and numbers should always be avoided.

Font size should be 12-point Arial with 1.5 line spacing. Other tips to help with the style and integrity of your report are also shown below. A sample title page is shown in the Appendix.

References: You present all your sources following the Harvard Referencing SystemWorking together

Discussing ideas with your fellow students is part of learning and we would encourage you to do this and to exchange interesting and relevant sources and references. However, there is a distinction between sharing ideas and collusion which is an academic offence. You must not work with others to the extent of exchanging written materials you have prepared, such as notes or drafts of assignments unless you have been expressly told that this is permissible. If these types of materials are shared this will be regarded as an assessment offence for the person who provides the material as well as for the person who uses it. Your own work should be regarded as your own property and you should protect it.

If you are working in a shared space, log off from the computer you are working on whenever you take a break so that others cannot access or copy your own work; take care to destroy printed drafts or copies of work, rather than just discarding them; and, don’t give your work to others in any format. If you are working on a group assignment make sure you understand the allocation of responsibilities between yourself and the other members of the group.

Referencing

Referencing is the way in which you arrange in your work the quotations you make from other authors or the sources on which you draw. Details of how to reference effectively can be found here:

• The learning resources web site at http://lrweb.beds.ac.uk/help/guide-to-ref
• The invisible library at http://lrweb.beds.ac.uk/invisiblelibrary.
• PAD also run sessions on effective referencing (see http://lrweb.beds.ac.uk/pad and their BREO site for further details).

If you don’t reference correctly then you are at risk of being accused of plagiarism. Plagiarism is an academic offence which covers both direct copying and copying or paraphrasing with only minor adjustments:

• A direct quotation from a text must be indicated by the use of quotation marks and the source of the quote (title, author, page number and date of publication);
• A paraphrased summary must be indicated by attribution of the author, date and source of the material including page numbers for the section(s) which have been summarised.

The Business School adopts the Harvard Reference System and no other method should be used.

Professional Academic Development (PAD)

It is not unusual to need some extra advice and guidance on developing your academic skills. The University has a specialist support area - Professional Academic Development (PAD) who can help and support you in a range of areas including:

• The quality of your written assignments
• Your organisational skills and how you approach studying
• Your time management and prioritising
• The strategies you use when reading
• Your language skills
• Aspects of your IT skills

There is no cost for PAD’s services. If you feel that you would benefit from some additional help with your studies then do contact them. You can visit their web site at http://lrweb.beds.ac.uk/studyhub to find out the dates of workshops on a range of topics or to book one-to-one appointments. You will also find a Professional Academic Development link on your home page within BREO, which provides access to a range of additional on-line resources.

Lovewell Chiti

Department of Law and Finance

University of Bedfordshire Business School

Appendix: The Assessment Criteria (Written Report)

Weightings (Please note: These are not chapter headings)

The marking is as follows:

• Background to the organisation showing good reading of appropriate sources 20%

• Evaluation of Financial Statements 35%

Completion of table 5 marks

Analysis and interpretation of the results 30 marks

• Comparison with Competitors 30%

Conclusion 15%