The British University in Dubai

Master of Business Administration (MBA)

Accounting and Finance for Managers – MGT519

Assignment -Term 3 (April 2020) – AY 2019-2020

Objective:

The main objective of this assignment is to evaluate students’ understanding and ability in collecting financial data and applying various financial analysis techniques to assess a company’s financial position in order to identify where improvements are needed. In addition, it aims at evaluating students’ ability to apply an appropriate software to prepare and analyse financial statements and to provide recommendations for the selected companies and investors.

Brief

The assignment should be carried out on a group basis of 2-4 students. Each group is required to select two publicly listed companies in the same industry (non-financial institutions) for two years.

Students are encouraged to select companies listed on the UAE or GCC financial markets.

The assignment should provide a comprehensive financial analysis for the selected companies using various financial analysis techniques such as graphs, common-size analysis and financial ratio analysis including DuPont analysis.

Your final report should include the following:

1. Analysing the following aspects of the selected firms’ over two years:
   1. Analysing liquidity
   2. Analysing assets management efficiency
   3. Analysing solvency or leverage
   4. Analysing profitability (including DuPont analysis).
   5. Analysing market value ratios
2. Evaluation of the selected firms’ cash conversion cycle (CCC).
3. iii) Common-size analysis.

iv) A description of the overall ratios trend and what it implies for current and future financial performance of the selected companies.

The assignment should have the following structure:

• 1. Abstract (Purpose, Methodology; Findings; Conclusion)
• 2. Introduction (objectives and significance of the study; background of the selected company used as a case study)
• 3. Literature Review (review at least five studies)
• 4. Methodology (sample, techniques measures, variables … etc)
• 5. Data Analysis
• 6. Findings and Discussion
• 7. Conclusion and Recommendations
• 8. References (use the referencing style adopted by BUiD)
• 9. Appendices (if needed)

Submission guidelines

• The research report must be submitted on or before 15 June 2020.
• The report must follow a word limit between 3500 and 4500 words.
• The soft copy of the report must be submitted through BlackBoard. This would automatically generate Turnitin Report for your manuscript. There are 2 folders: one folder is for draft submission for checking plagiarism prior to submitting the final report, and another folder for submitting final report.
• Use of appropriate software is encouraged.
• The title page of the report must have the students’ names, IDs, mobile numbers and email addresses
• Please follow strict norms on plagiarism. For further details, please refer to the student handbook.
• The financial statements used in the analysis should be attached to your report (Place it in the Appendix) or must be sent to the module coordinator by email.
• Instructor feedback on your assignment will be available until week 9.

Marking Scheme

 The assignment has a total of 100 marks and these will be allocated as follows:

Report Element	Points
Abstract	5
Introduction (background of each company used as a case study, problem, aim, objectives, rationale … etc)	10
Literature Review	10
Methodology	10
Data analysis (e.g. graphs, formulas, calculations etc..)	20
Findings and discussion	25
Summary, conclusion and recommendations	10
Overall Quality, Presentation, Clarity, Referencing etc.	10
Total	100

Module Coordinator

Dr. Amer Alaya