Finance

The financial statements tell a story about the financial health of a business at a given point in time. The purpose of this is to apply ratio analysis to assess financial health of a publicly held corporation. Use the financial statements identified in the module four case to compute three ratios, one for each of the three following categories Liquidity (solvency), debt service, and profitability. Comment on the ratios by answering the following questions. Go to IBIS, locate a U.S. specialty industry report, which you feel is appropriate for the company you are analyzing. Use the statistics tab to view the ratios. Name the company and show the computation of the three ratios. (2 to 3 sentences) Comment on the purpose and information conveyed by each ratio. (2 to 3 sentences) What did you learn about the company by reviewing the three ratios? (2 to 3 sentences) What is your conclusion about liquidity, debt, and profitability for this company? (2 to 3 sentences) How successful is the company relative to the industry average and leaders in its industry? Indicate the industry and specialty industry report used for comparison. Write two paragraphs or more. Include ratios found in the IBIS database to support your conclusion.

Select an ongoing or upcoming ICO or IEO on which to write an analyst report. Also, use CoinGecko, CryptoSlate, ICObench, ICOdrops, ICOmarks, ICOstamp, ICOrating and/or any other ranking sites and internet resources to select one that is suitable for a comparative analysis as follows: • The ongoing or upcoming ICO or IEO should NOT have been completed when you write your report; • The completed ICO or IEO should have been completed by 1 December 2019, or before, and have been sufficiently successful that its market cap is at least $5 million, the coin or token is ranked, and it has been traded on at least one reputable exchange for at least 1 year; • Select the two ICO/IEOs to be as similar as possible, such as both being in the same category (e.g. education, gaming, DeFi), both being issued on the same platform and/or on the same exchange (for IEOs). If you choose to compare an ICO with an IEO then your report must discuss this difference as one of the success factors. • The rationale for comparing the two ICOs/IEOs is to infer the likely performance of the ongoing ICO/IEO from the observed performance of the completed one and the factors that have influenced this. WHAT DATA? 1. Obtain as much qualitative data as possible for both ICO/IEOs, for instance (note – not all these features will necessarily apply): o White paper or Lite paper o Marketing materials o Analysts ratings o Social media hype (e.g. on Telegram, Reddit, Google or Twitter) o Any other news, data or information relevant for determining the ICO/IEO success Record a URL list of web pages where the information was obtained so that the reader is able to follow links to these data when you write your report. 2. Obtain as much quantitative data on both ICO/IEOs as you can, such as: o Soft and hard cap targets o Initial token prices during pre-ICO, and prices during official ICO o Total amount raised, during pre-ICO and during the official ICO. These amounts may be in fiat and/or crypto currencies. 3. Download at least 1 year of daily historical price data of the completed ICO. TASKS: Use your research to write a report using the structure described below which is informed by an Excel spreadsheet containing the data described above and the analysis described below. Structure of the Report: • Executive Summary [10%]: Highlight the key points in this report • Business Analysis [20%]: Compare and contrast the qualitative features of the two ICO/IEOs using the information described in point 1 above • Financial Analysis [20%]: Report the quantitative data described in point 2 above, in a suitable tabular format and compare the properties of these data for the two ICO/IEOs • Performance Analysis [20%]: Use the historical data described in point 3 to analyse the performance of the completed ICO/IEO, using the Sharpe ratio and any other performance metrics you wish. Assume the risk-free rate is zero. • Risk Analysis [20%]: Discuss the factors which may have influenced the performance analysis of the completed ICO/IEO. One or more of these factors could be relevant: (i) industry-wide factors specific to the project; and/or (ii) economic factors at the times of the ICO/IEO; and/or (iii) factors such as operational risks that are specific to the exchange(s) where the coin or token trades; • Analyst Recommendation [10%]: Bring all the information in your report together to conclude with a discussion about the likely success of the project underpinning the ongoing or upcoming ICO or IEO (over a short/medium horizon only) and a recommendation regarding the coin or token when it is released, viz.: strong buy, buy, watch, sell, or strong sell.

Did the bailouts help or hurt the economy? Do you support the idea of the government stepping in to help companies in trouble? Could this promote the moral hazard problem? Fully explain and support your response. What are some of the major bailouts of recent? How are those company’s currently fairing?

After several rounds of interview, you are successfully appointed as the CFO of the Company. The Company has enjoyed considerable success in recent years and the board of directors have decided to adopt a growth strategy by making further investment in their current production line and acquiring an existing company in their industry. As the newly appointed CFO of the Company, you are tasked to evaluate the performance of the Company and prepare a report to the board of directors with evaluation of the potential investment opportunities. The first investment under consideration is to make further investment in their current product, which needs initial investment between £40,000,000 and £50,000,000 and has a life of 10 years. The finance department appraised some other similar investments before using different investment appraisal techniques. At the same time, the Company plans to acquire another company in the same industry in the near future. However, the board of directors require more information for the potential target. You are tasked with the responsibility of identifying a potential target company and preparing a report to the board of directors justifying the choice of a target company and potential implications from mergers and acquisitions. Required: Suppose you are successfully appointed as the CFO for ONE of the listed companies below. Burberry Group PLC As the newly appointed CFO of your chosen company, you are required to write a report to the senior management team – fully referenced, and address the following: 1. Evaluate financial performance: Choose FOUR categories from the list of five categories of financial ratios below and use ONE financial ratio from each category to assess the financial health of your chosen company using past 5-year financial information: a. Profitability b. Efficiency c. Liquidity d. Financial gearing e. Investment Note: Analyse your chosen financial ratios using information from financial statements. Considering word limit, please choose ONE financial ratio from FOUR different categories listed above; therefore, you should focus on four ratios in total in this part of analysis. Critical analysis of the four ratios under four categories is required for a good work. Please critically evaluate past five-year firm performance, i.e., 2015-2019, using your chosen ratios and discuss the problems and limitations of financial ratios as a tool of financial analysis before make recommendation to the board of directors. Create your own small tables, diagrams and charts in your analysis and present professionally. Financial ratios can be collected using Osiris and Fame through ARU library (https://anglia.libguides.com/az.php?a=o), annual reports or other professional resources. Compare with competitors and industry will be helpful. Suggested word: 750-850 words. 2. Investment appraisal: You plan to use NPV and IRR techniques to evaluate the project. Critically discuss NPV and IRR techniques and the implications of the investment on the Company. Risk and uncertainty in investment appraisal should be considered before you make recommendation. The discount rate is 12% for the Company (Ignore inflation and taxation). Note: Please present NPV and IRR results using small tables. You need to make decision on which investment appraisal format that you will choose. The project will be based on your chosen company, therefore, you have the flexibility to decide the project using your ESTIMATE. The investment should be around £40m to £50m, but how the money is invested would depend on the nature of the investment. Sensitivity analysis will be helpful to analyse different scenarios for the appraisal. Suggested word: 600-750 words. 3. Potential acquisition: After you identify a potential target company, you will address the following in your report to the senior management team: a. Rationale for choosing the target company b. The synergistic gain of the acquisition for the Company c. Proposed deal value and finance of the acquisition d. The potential implications of such acquisition on firm performance e. Challenges and risk assessment of the acquisition Note: Based on analyses of your chosen company, please identify a target company in the real business world. Good work will provide critical analysis of the deal, rather than provide some general discussion without in-depth analysis. Good work will also link potential implications from the deal with your chosen financial ratios discussed in the financial performance section. Suggested word: 800- 900 words. 4. Appendix: Supporting information to help the senior management team make their final decision. Present your own tables and do NOT copy and paste annual report in your appendix.

Answer the following questions in short-answer essay format. Each short-answer essay must address all relevant parts of each question and include examples where appropriate. Make sure to cite any references you use. Proper citation format for a reference includes the name of the author(s), the title of the work, the date of the publication, and the page number. 1. Alan insures his residence on a standard homeowner’s policy. He comes home from work one day and finds that a burglar has broken in and stolen some of his possessions. He immediately contacts his police and his insurance company to report the claim.  a. List and explain the six steps the claims adjuster will take to handle this claim. Be sure to discuss why each of the steps is important. b. Assume the claims adjuster for Alan’s insurance company does not feel that Alan is entitled to any money after a brief review of his initial report of the loss. She issues a denial letter stating that the company is not going to pay anything for his claim. Do you feel the adjuster has engaged in good faith claim handling practices? Explain why or why not. 2. Poor Alan! After his claim is settled, he invites a few close friends over for dinner. As his guests are leaving for the evening, one of them trips and falls down the stairs leading to the sidewalk. It does not appear that the person is injured too badly but, just to be safe, Alan takes his guest to the emergency room. She is released to go home later that night so things appear to be just fine. Two days later, Alan gets a call from the law firm representing his injured guest, and the attorney states that they will be filing a claim seeking both special and general damages.  a. Define special damages and general damages and give an example of both special and general damages. b. Do you think the insurance company will set up a reserve for this loss? Why or why not? c. Why is it important for the claims representative to contact the insured or injured party shortly after being notified of a loss? 3. Alan’s homeowner policy provides coverage for his contents on a replacement cost basis. In your mind, which is better: coverage based on replacement cost or actual cash value (ACV)? Please explain the rationale for your answer. 4. One of the challenging tasks facing claims adjusters is establishing reserves for losses that have occurred.  a. Define the term reserve b. Do you feel it is more difficult to establish a reserve for property losses or liability losses? Be sure to discuss the reasons for your answer.

Question 1  Go to the Industry Center in Yahoo Finance! Use the URL https://finance.yahoo.com/industries  Choose an industry and a specific company within this industry. (Not IBM)  Briefly introduce the company you chose, including name, address, main products, stock price, volume, economic performance, etc. The purpose of doing it is to inform me of what kind of company you chose.  Report the descriptive statistics of the adjusted prices of the company, including Mean, SE, Median, Skewness, Kurtosis, Min, Max, Count, etc. (Download monthly data, five years)  Draw Line Chart (Time Series) and Histogram of you data.  Question 2  Estimate the single-index model and explain the coefficients  o Download weekly data, two years.  o Calculate the rate of return on both the stock you chose and S&P500  o Report and explain R-square and standard error  o Report and explain the economic meaning of the coefficients ? and ?  o Report and explain t-stat and p-value of the coefficients ? and ?  o Draw residual plot and line fit plot  2  Question 3  Using the Historical Prices option, you are required to download stock data of Amazon (AMZN) and Starbucks (SBUX).  o Monthly data, from Jan 1st, 2010 to Jan 1st, 2018. There are 96 observation.  o We only make use of the Adj Close price.  o Assume that the return on risk-free asset is the return on S&P 500.  Using these data to allocate your money across these two risky assets.  o That is, you are required to solve for wAMZN and wSBUX .

Black Swans in investing in emerging markets (data provided, you are required to use STATA to do the empirical coursework)   In writing your essay: • You have to provide motivation for the chosen topic and clearly express your objectives in the context of investment decisions in emerging markets. • You have to be able to collect, present, and analyse data relevant for the issues you consider. In other words, your essay should be an empirical work (literature survey are not permitted). • The permitted source of market data is Thomson Reuters Datastream. • At least two-thirds of the essay should be devoted to your results and their analysis. • Your essay should provide evidence of extensive reading on a topic and ability to provide a focused and analytical discussion of the relevant issues. • The essay should have a clear, well-organised structure. You should show an ability to relate evidence to theory. • The essay must be carefully and accurately referenced.   Important: Please upload your data and work files (e.g., Excel and Stata files including Stata dta and do file). The information submitted should be sufficient to replicate your results!   Important: the above information is the university official requirement, and the following are my instructions: I intend to imitate a similar structure to the given examples, and analyse the country group ‘The Next Eleven’ (known also by the numeronym N-11). I have already provided the data needed for this essay. The excel file includes the MSCI indices for only ten N-11 countries (except Iran as it’s not included into the MSCI index), and also the MSCI Emerging Markets index. I intend to compare the ten countries with the average levels of the emerging markets. This can allow an investigation on whether these N-11 countries can have the potential capacity to become as important globally as the BRICs. However, the student sample given is not perfect. Please do pay much attention to the motivation/contribution of this essay and avoid mechanically duplicate the materials given. Please remember to record the original data dta file and do file as these documents are required to submit as well.   (What Is Next Eleven? The Next Eleven, also known as N-11, are the eleven countries that are poised to become the biggest economies in the world in the 21st century, after the BRIC countries. The N-11 was chosen by Goldman Sachs Group, Inc in a 2005 paper exploring the potential of BRIC and the N-11. They are – Bangladesh, Egypt, Indonesia, Iran, Mexico, Nigeria, Pakistan, Philippines, South Korea, Turkey and Vietnam.)

Paper must include the following topics. US Monetary Policy, starting with Alexander Hamilton, the formation of the Federal Reserve, the Fed’s mandate and the tools it employs to meet that mandate under normal circumstances, then extraordinary actions it took after 9/11, the 2008 financial crisis, and how it is currently dealing with the effects of COVID on the economy.

Write a 750 to 1000 word paper. In your paper include the following: ·         Complete questions A through J for the Mini Case involving Shrieves Casting Company on pages 495 & 496. Please complete the paper in actual paper format including an introduction paragraph, a clearly labeled paragraph for each question (A, B, C, etc.), a conclusion paragraph, and a references page. Include a title page and 3-5 references.  Only one reference may be from the internet (not Wikipedia).  The other references must be from the Grantham University online library.  Please adhere to the Concise Guide to APA Style when writing and submitting assignments and papers. . https://ebooks.cenreader.com/#!/reader/d75868ef-fb3c-45c3-9365-7b65ba59c381/page/1ba4719db50d2d5d24d726c46c0437f8

1.      If you had started your own business and were contemplating expansion, would you choose to finance your expansion with debt or equity? Justify and defend your choice with sound reasoning. Your answer should be in your own words.   2.     When using the Internal Rate of Return method to assess capital projects, what is a common pitfall that might occur if an organization consistently chooses projects with the highest IRR? Your response should be in your own words.   3.     What are the three basic steps to creating a set of projected financial statements? Why is this process not as simple as it sounds? Your answer should be in your own words. 4.     How does a firm go about determining how much funds will be needed to achieve their strategic plan? 5.     How do privately owned firms and small businesses go about estimating their weighted average cost of capital? Your response should be in your own words. 6.     What are the three elements of the Weighted Average Cost of Capital formula? Which of the elements are impacted by taxes? Your answer should be in your own words. 7.     Outline the basic formula for the Weighted Average Cost of Capital and explain how it is used in the capital budgeting process. Your answer should be in your own words. 8.     What are the key strengths and weaknesses of the Net Present Value method of assessing capital projects? Your answer should be in your own words. 9.     What are the five key ways free cash flow is used? How does this relate to an organization s financial plan? 10.  What is sensitivity analysis and what role does it play in the capital budgeting process? Your answer should be in your own words.