MODULE TITLE: Financial Analysis Management & Enterprise – FAME Assignment 1
PROGRAMME: MBA – Full Time
MODULE PERIOD: JUNE – JULY 2024
ASSESSMENT TYPE: 2000 Words Assignment Report
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1. Your question is in 3 parts, as follows:
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Choose a listed company on the London Stock Exchange (LSE) in any of the following sectors: Retailers, Food & Beverages, Health Care, Oil & Gas, Pharmaceuticals & Biotech, Telecommunications and Utilities.
Obtain the annual reports of the company and one of its main competitors for the latest three years from its website or other sources.
a) Using financial ratios, ccritically compare and analyse their financial performance over the last three years.
b) If you were going to buy one of these companies’ shares, which one would you choose? Explain your reasons.
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2. Presentation
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· Your reports and briefing paper should be clearly and logically structured in whatever format appears to be the most suitable for supporting the analysis, arguments, conclusions and recommendations. Locate the ratio calculations in an appendix and only present the actual ratios in the body of the report.
· Key points of the comparative analysis may be summarised as a bulleted list to optimise the use of your words.
· Tables, graphs and charts are a convenient way of organising your findings and presenting data. They also make it easier for the end user of your report (and the marker) to understand your findings and so you are recommended to use visual aids where appropriate.
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3. Assessment Requirements:
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· The submission of your work assessment should be organised and clearly structured.
· Maximum word length allowed is 2000 words, excluding words in Charts & Tables and in the Appendixes section of your report.
· Student is required to submit a type-written document in Microsoft Word format with Times New Roman font type, size 12 and line spacing 1.5.
· This assignment is worth 100% of the final assessment of the module.
· Indicate any sources of information and literature review by including all the necessary citations and references adopting the Harvard Referencing System.
· Students who have been found to have committed acts of Plagiarism are automatically considered to have failed the entire module. If found to have breached the regulation for the second time, you will be asked to leave the course.
· Plagiarism involves taking someone else’s words, thoughts, ideas or essays from online essay banks and trying to pass them off as your own. It is a form. of cheating which is taken very seriously.
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4. Marking Scheme:
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Word Limit
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Marks (%)
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Background on company and competitor
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200
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15
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Use of financial ratios, to evaluate the financial performance and financial position of selected company and competitor
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1600
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60
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Recommendation on shares to buy
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200
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15
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Presentation, use of tables, referencing and detailed financial ratio workings in appendix
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10
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Total
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2000
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100%
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5. Learning Outcomes tested in this assignment
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Upon successful completion of this module the student will be able to:
1. Demonstrate a critical awareness, comprehension and synthesis of a business and its future prospects.
2. Identify, organise, analyse and critically evaluate financial information, articulate conclusions and form. recommendations, based on a disciplined, thoughtful and well-structured appraisal of the evidence and founded on clear theoretical underpinnings.
3. Structure and communicate ideas based on an understanding and appreciation of the practical application of key issues and theories in corporate financial management.
4. Display an ability to evaluate complex business issues, synthesise concepts and to formulate and propose advice based on informed judgement.
5. Articulate conclusions and make recommendations, in an independent manner, which are based on informed analysis and critical appraisal.
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6. Notes on Plagiarism
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Plagiarism is passing off the work of others as your own. This constitutes academic theft and is a serious matter that is penalized in assignment marking.
Plagiarism is the submission of an item of assessment containing elements of work produced by another person(s) in such a way that it could be assumed to be the student’s own work. Examples of plagiarism are:
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· The verbatim copying of another person’s work without acknowledgement
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· The close paraphrasing of another person’s work by simply changing a few words or altering the order of presentation without acknowledgement
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· The unacknowledged quotation of phrases from another person’s work and/or the presentation of another person’s idea(s) as one’s own.
· It also includes self-plagiarism' (which occurs where, for example, you submit work that you have presented for assessment on a previous occasion). And the submission of material from 'essay banks' (even if the authors of such material appear to be giving you permission to use it in this way)
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Copying or close paraphrasing with occasional acknowledgement of the source may also be deemed to be plagiarism is the absence of quotation marks implies that the phraseology is the student’s own.
Plagiarised work may belong to another student or be from a published source such as a book, report, journal or material available on the internet.
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7. Harvard Referencing
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The structure of a citation under the Harvard referencing system is the author’s surname, year of publication, and page number or range, in parentheses, as follows:
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The page number or page range is omitted if the entire work is cited. The author’s surname is omitted if it appears in the text. Thus we may say: “Jones (2001) revolutionized the field of trauma surgery.”
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Two or three authors are cited using “and” or “&”: (Deane, Smith, and Jones, 1991) or (Deane, Smith & Jones, 1991). More than three authors are cited using et al. (Deane et al. 1992).
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An unknown date is cited as no date (Deane n.d.). A reference to a reprint is cited with the original publication date in square brackets (Marx [1867] 1967, p. 90).
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If an author published two books in 2005, the year of the first (in the alphabetic order of the references) is cited and referenced as 2005a, the second as 2005b.
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A citation is placed wherever appropriate in or after the sentence. If it is at the end of a sentence, it is placed before the period, but a citation for an entire block quote immediately follows the period at the end of the block since the citation is not an actual part of the quotation itself.
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Complete citations are provided in alphabetical order in a section following the text, usually designated as “Works cited” or “References”. The difference between a “works cited” or “references” list and a bibliography is that a bibliography may include works not directly cited in the text.
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All citations are in the same font as the main text.
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Examples of book references are:
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Smith, J. (2005a). Dutch Citing Practices. The Hague: Holland Research Foundation.
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Smith, J. (2005b). Harvard Referencing. London: Jolly Good Publishing.
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In giving the city of publication, an internationally well-known city (such as London, The Hague, or New York) is referenced as the city alone. If the city is not internationally well known, the country (or state and country if in the U.S.) are given.
Examples of journal references are:
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Smith, John Maynard. “The origin of altruism,” Nature 393, 1998, pp. 639-40.
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Bowcott, Owen. “Street Protest”, The Guardian, October 18, 2005, accessed February 7, 2006.
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