Accounting Group Assignment
BU5031 Accounting Group Assignment
You are a group of trainee financial analysts working in a financial institution. Your group is being considered for secondment to the loan and mortgage section of the company. The secondment involves working on reviewing funding applications to support small to medium enterprises to develop and expand. Your supervisor has set you a task to test your commercial awareness, competency in analysing financial information and report writing skills. Details of the task are below.
The task:
Write a report of no more than 3000 words (excluding your reference list and any potential diagrams, figures, tables etc.) that critically analyses and evaluates the financial performance and stewardship of a FTSE100 company of your choice (see list in Appendix B). Your report should explain and justify what you consider to be the most important sections of the annual report and your method of analysis of these sections.
As a financial analyst, would you recommend making an investment in the company? Explain and justify your answer.
As a credit institution, would you recommend granting a loan to the company? Explain and justify your answer.
Note: You are expected to conduct a thorough investigation into your chosen company. All of the chapters covered in the course are relevant to this assignment. For the financial analysis and report, chapters 9 and 12 are useful. You are also free to utilise any other sources of information such as academic papers, industry publications, case studies etc. to support your arguments and recommendations. The report must be written in your own words. Any report that is found to contain plagiarism will be referred to the Discipline Committee.
Group Assignment Workshop
Dr Sarah Smith will hold a workshop that is designed to give you advice and guidance on how to tackle the group assignment. You can find the workshop times using MyTimetable.
Your Group
You will be assigned to a group on Blackboard. It is your responsibility to contact your group members and to agree on how the task will be divided up and ultimately each person’s contribution drawn together for the final report.
Learning Outcomes of the Task:
To further develop your understanding of the financial analysis and the technical skills relevant to completing the task.
Skills Development of the Task:
- To organize and attend group meetings
- To develop team working and co-operation skills
- To develop workload distribution skills
- To develop conflict resolution skills
- To brainstorm with group members
- To develop research skills
- To develop report writing skills
- To develop your ability to think critically and creatively
Appendix A: Avoiding Plagiarism
Definition of Plagiarism: Plagiarism is the use, without adequate acknowledgment, of the intellectual work of another person in work submitted for assessment. A student cannot be found to have committed plagiarism where it can be shown that the student has taken all reasonable care to avoid representing the work of others as his or her own.
Anyone who is investigated for alleged plagiarism is done so under the Code of Practice on Student Discipline (Academic).
There are many styles of referencing and citing. The Business School recommends the use of the Harvard referencing style. The library produces useful information on Citing References.
At present the University of Aberdeen Business School uses Safe Assign to check students work and you will be asked to submit an electronic version of your report to this for analysis. You will be asked to submit an electronic version of your report to this for analysis. Further instructions on this will be given to you via the assessment guidance on MyAberdeen.
The Centre for Academic Development provides guidance on how to avoid plagiarism http://www.abdn.ac.uk/sls/online–resources/avoiding–plagiarism/ and you should refer to this prior to finalising your assignments. It is the students responsibility to make themselves aware of and to comply with the rules on plagiarism.
Failure to submit to Safe Assign will result in your grade being given G3 (zero), as per the School’s policy on the Lateness Policy.
Referencing and Citing guidance can be found in the following area of the Sir Duncan Rice Library website https://www.abdn.ac.uk/library/documents/guides/qgbus003.pdf .
Appendix B: FTSE 100 Companies.
| 3i Group Plc | Kingfisher |
| Admiral Group | Land Securities Group plc |
| Anglo American | Legal & General Group plc |
| Antofagasta Holdings | Lloyds Banking Group plc |
| Ashtead Group plc | London Stock Exchange Group plc |
| Associated British Foods plc | M&G plc |
| AstraZeneca plc | Melrose Industries plc |
| Auto Trader Group plc | Mondi Plc |
| Avast plc | Morrison (Wm) Supermarkets |
| AVEVA Group plc | National Grid |
| Aviva plc | NatWest Group plc |
| B&M European Value Retail SA | Next plc |
| BAE Systems plc | Ocado Group plc |
| Barclays plc | Pearson plc |
| Barratt Developments plc | Pennon Group |
| Berkeley Group Holdings plc | Persimmon plc |
| BHP Group Plc | Phoenix Group Holdings Plc |
| BP Plc | Polymetal International plc |
| British American Tobacco plc | Prudential plc |
| British Land Co plc | Reckitt Benckiser Group Plc |
| BT Group plc | RELX plc |
| Bunzl plc | Rentokil Initial Plc |
| Burberry Group plc | Rightmove plc |
| Coca-Cola HBC AG | Rio Tinto plc |
| Compass Group plc | Rolls Royce Holdings Plc |
| CRH plc | Royal Dutch Shell Plc A Shares |
| Croda International plc | Royal Dutch Shell Plc B Shares |
| DCC plc | RSA Insurance Group |
| Diageo plc | Sage Group plc |
| Evraz plc | Sainsbury (J) plc |
| Experian Plc | Schroders plc |
| Ferguson plc | Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust plc |
| Flutter Entertainment | Segro Plc |
| Fresnillo | Severn Trent Plc |
| GlaxoSmithKline plc | Smith & Nephew plc |
| Glencore plc | Smith (DS) |
| GVC Holdings plc | Smiths Group Plc |
| Halma plc | Smurfit Kappa Group Plc |
| Hargreaves Lansdown plc | Spirax-Sarco Engineering plc |
| Hikma Pharmaceuticals | SSE plc |
| Homeserve plc | St James’s Place Plc |
| HSBC Holdings plc | Standard Chartered plc |
| Imperial Brands Group | Standard Life Aberdeen Plc |
| Informa plc | Taylor Wimpey plc |
| Inter-Continental Hotels Group plc | Tesco plc |
| Intermediate Capital Group plc | Unilever plc |
| International Consolidated Airlines Group
SA |
United Utilities Group Plc |
| Intertek Group plc | Vodafone Group plc |
| JD Sports Fashion plc | Whitbread plc |
| Johnson Matthey Plc | WPP plc |
| Just Eat Takeaway.com NV |
