presentation

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Assessment Brief (Group Assignment)

1. Module code and title

AC6020 Corporate Financial Reporting

2. Module tutor

Chris Wiltshire

3. Tutor with responsibility for this Assessment

Chris Wiltshire This is your first point of contact.

4. (Element number), Weighting, Type and Size of Assessment

001: 20% Coursework: Group presentation: 20 minutes plus 5 minutes of questions.

5. Submission deadline

Presentations will take place in weeks 27 to 29 in February 2015. Copies of supporting materials should be submitted at the end of your presentation.

6. Arrangements for submission

The assignment will be “submitted” by attendance at, and delivery of the group presentations and submission of the supporting materials. You will also be required to submit a paper copy of the slides and other relevant materials supporting your presentation at the conclusion of your group’s presentation in week 27 or 28 as appropriate. Any student who is unable to attend the group presentation eg through illness, should contact the Module Tutor at the earliest opportunity.

7. Date and location for return of work

Written feedback using the attached form will be received 4 weeks after the presentation by email to the members of the group.

8. Disabled students

Alternative assessment arrangements may be made, where appropriate, for disabled students. However, these will only be implemented upon the advice of the Disability Advisor. Disabled students wishing to be considered for alternative assessment arrangements must give notification of the disability (with evidence) to the Disability Advisor by the published deadlines.

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9. University Regulations for Assessment

(Standard statement) All assessments are subject to the Academic Regulations for Taught Provision. These include regulations relating to Errors of Attribution and Assessment Offences. In exercising their judgement, Examiners may penalise any work where the standard of English, numeracy or presentation adversely affects the quality of the work, or where the work submitted exceeds the published size or time limits, or where the work fails to follow normal academic conventions for acknowledging sources. See additional notes on Attribution of Sources and References set out below.

10. The requirements for the assessment Throughout this module you will be carrying out an in-depth examination of the financial reports and background materials on a company of your choice. The aim of this assignment is that you will bring that research material together into a presentation to be made by the directors of your company to a team of financial analysts. The presentation is designed to inform the analysts, the City and the financial press about your results for the last year and encourage them to recommend your company for investment. You will have been working in groups for this purpose of no more than four students and the presentation must include contributions from all members of the group. Within this framework, if you wish to do so you could establish different roles representing directors with different duties, but the contribution of each member must be balanced with the others. You will need to have gained a full understanding of the “anatomy” of published financial statements and the wider regulatory guidelines (including those driven by the City Code and the codes on corporate governance) and conceptual principles in order properly to prepare your materials and make your presentation. In presenting the details of your company’s results, you will need to ensure that you present a balanced analysis, this will include less than satisfactory results as well as the more satisfactory elements and provide explanations from the literature and your research materials as to why successes have been realised and problems have occurred. Your presentation should identify the sources of your data. The extent of your bibliography will be considered as part of the overall assessment of your work. Your presentation should address at least the following issues but you may cover any element of the module syllabus that you might otherwise wish to include: (a) Describe and explain from your research materials the underlying factors affecting

the results of your chosen company for the most recent financial year. Review these against comparative figures for the previous year and against general statistics for other companies in the same sector. Investigation of the background material is the important aspect of this part of the assignment. (60 marks).

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(b) Identify key investor ratios for your company and illustrate their significance to the analysts and their clients with the aim of assisting them in making decisions as to future investment in the company. (25 marks)

(c) The visible evidence of corporate governance in the company in the published

financial statements. Assess the strength of compliance with the corporate governance regime and demonstrate how this is represented in the published financial statements. (15 marks)

11. Assessment criteria The presentation will be assessed against the criteria set out in the following assessment grid schedules and will consider all the elements of the guidelines given above. The extent of your bibliography will be considered as part of the overall assessment of your work. Mark scheme

The mark awarded for the group will be given to each member of the group. A copy of the assessment sheets which will be used in assessing the presentations is attached. 12. Special instructions You will need to establish by week 3 of the module the members of your group and submit the group names to your tutor. In week 10 there is a session in the timetable to discuss analysis techniques with workshops to discuss progress on the assignment. You must have done some preparatory work before this week in order to make full use of the sessions provided. To reduce the perceived advantage of additional time that may be inferred for those students presenting in the later weeks of the timetable, all groups must have completed their preparation work by the first presentation session in order to be in a position to execute their presentation if chosen in the first week. The exact timetable for each week’s presentations will only be released two days before the due date. You should note that presentations may be filmed on video for the purposes of external moderation. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Recommended warning on referencing in the context of this assignment As far as the group presentation is concerned you should attribute on your slides and copy presentation notes your sources for the information used (including the chosen company itself) but this is for indicative purposes rather than to comply with the full rigours of academic plagiarism in view of your roles as “members of staff” of your chosen company. Your attention is drawn to the University Regulations for Assessment – Section 7

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Careful referencing of sources is vital when making use of the work of others. You are expected to employ the referencing conventions recommended in the Course. These conventions apply to information taken from internet sources, as well as books, journals and lectures. If you are unsure of the way to reference properly, seek advice from a member of staff before you submit the assessment. These are some of the points you should check before submitting your work:

 are all direct quotations, from both primary and secondary sources, suitably acknowledged (placed in quotation marks or indented)?

 have you provided full details of the source of the quotation, according to the referencing convention used in the Course?

 have you acknowledged the source of ideas not your own, even if you are not quoting directly from the source?

 have you avoided close paraphrase from sources? (Check that you are not presenting other people’s words or phrasing as if they are your own.)

 if you have worked closely with others in preparing for this assessment, is the material you are presenting sufficiently your own?

A Harvard referencing tutorial can be found at: http://ist.glos.ac.uk/referencing/harvard/ The tutorial should take approx 20 minutes to work through and includes lots of examples of different types of resources. It is based on the “Cite them right” book (Richard Pears and Graham Shields (2008). Cite them right: the essential referencing guide. Newcastle upon Tyne, Pear Tree Books) available on Amazon and copies in the Learning Centre.

More details about referencing, including a quick referencing guide and a tutorial about plagiarism, details of how to reference sources such as websites, online journals, newspaper articles, and official publications, are available at:

http://insight.glos.ac.uk/departments/lis/resources/Pages/referencing.aspx If you are unsure of the way to reference properly, seek advice from a member of staff before you submit the assessment. In submitting your work for assessment you are making a statement that it is your own work, it has not been submitted for any other assessment, and it does not infringe the ethical principles set out in the University’s Research Ethics: Principles and Procedures.

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13. AC6020 Presentation Criteria 2014/15 Topic: A Group presentation of the annual results of a chosen company reporting

under international financial reporting standards

Date:

Names: 1.

2.

3.

4.

Good Poor

5 4 3 2 1 Realization of brief

Effective Appropriate

Preparation Familiarity with material Knowledge of subject matter

Content & Structure

Introduction Logical Development Appropriateness of arguments Conclusion Summary Completeness

Timing Well executed Within time limit Appropriate use of time

Visual aids Adequacy Appropriateness Clarity Use of colour Impact Recognition of special needs

Verbal Delivery Intonation & emphasis Audibility Speed & pace Fluency Enunciation Vocabulary

Non-verbal Dress Posture Mannerisms Gestures Eye contact Confidence

Overall effectiveness

Impact Audience response

Response to questions

Ability to cope with questions Quality of answers given

References

Harvard Appropriate sources

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AC6020 Presentation Criteria continued Overall assessment Tutor will indicate which applies An excellent presentation.

Very well structured, all relevant materials included in a balanced way and no major omissions. Excellent presentation skills.

A good presentation. Well structured with appropriate content. Most of the relevant materials included in a balanced way though some omissions or unbalanced elements. Presenters possess good presentation skills.

A satisfactory presentation. Some weaknesses in structure and content. of the relevant materials included in a balanced way though some significant omissions or unbalanced elements. Presenters possess adequate presentation skills.

An inadequate presentation. Major weakness in structure and content. Some elements considered, but major omissions. Presentation skills unsatisfactory.

Areas for improvement:

Comments overall:

MARKS: Part 1 : /60 Part 2: /25 Part 3: /15 TOTAL: %