...Memorandum To: DeLaune/Simonov From: Courtney Lancaster Date: October 15, 2013 Subject: History of the Auditing Profession Similar to all aspects of the accounting profession, the auditing focus in the business world has evolved considerably over its history. The main drive behind the changes has been new legislation and a strict enforcement standard which more times then not was influenced by the fraudulent activity delivered by corporate management. By the creation of oversight policies and standard setting entities, these countless scandals have shaped the accounting and auditing profession into what we know today. In 1986 the state of New York passed legislation in which the credentials regarding a Certified Public Accountant were formally acknowledged and recognized, thus creating the accounting profession itself. In 1913 the United State of America ratified the 16th amendment leading to the creation of income tax causing a spike in demand for accountants. While these changes in legislation were coming about and the profession itself was growing rapidly there was still no entity in the US that regulated the profession. In 1917 the first step to set a standard for the profession was put into action. The Federal Reserve Board and Federal Trade Commission requested that American Institute of Accountants produce a bulletin for a standardization of auditing procedures. A publication titled “Uniformed Accounting” was released shortly after as a first set of published...
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...The purpose of the prospectus is to ensure that the company gives to the public a certain amount of information about its financial position when it is first floated and whenever it subsequently offers its shares and debentures to the public. It must fully and fairly disclose the relevant facts so the risk of investment can be assessed (Vanessa, 2011). Prospectus is a way to give the public a clear understanding of newly listed companies, the investing public should take time to read before investment. The providing of prospectus can also reduce the risk of fraud of companies as they need to disclose their companies’ information fully and fairly. From the Companies Ordinance, prospectus means any prospectus, notice, circular, brochure, advertisement, or other document which offering any shares or debentures of a company to the public for subscription or purchases, or calculated to invite offers by the public to subscribe or purchase shares or debentures. If the shares or debenture are offered to any section of the public, whether selected as members or debenture holders or as clients of the person making the offer or invitation, or in any other manner, it is to be regarded as an offer or invitation to the public(s 48A(1)). Thus, whether the document technically constitutes an offer or invitation to the public, it will fall within the prospectus provisions. The provision relating to prospectuses apply as the shares or debentures had been offered to the public by the...
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...This Module is a Masters level module in Financial Management and Control. It introduces students to the interaction of accounting and finance with management in the strategic ‘where are we now, where do we want to be, how do we get there, and where are we now’ learning loop. This module concentrates on answering four key questions: • Where do companies get their sources of financial information for performance evaluation, • How do they evaluate financial performance, plan business strategies and make financial decisions • What they should do in order to effectively control and manage the financial resource, • How do they report the results and performance to all interested parties. It ought to go without saying that Masters level work will involve a significant amount of work on your part. Simply attending class sessions will not get you through this module. There needs to be a lot of student interaction with the material and a process of development through the module. My advice is to attend all the class sessions (experience shows that those who do not severely disadvantage themselves – i.e. FAIL) and to make use of the teaching staff as much as possible, but also to see ‘class’ as a way of bringing things together; a time or focus. The vast majority of the workload for this module must be outside of class contact time. You ought to be reading widely to get to grips with the methodology and techniques of the subject. You will find a mix of numerical...
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...BTEC Level 3 Diploma in Business [pic] |UNIT |Unit 2: Business Resources | |UNIT CREDIT |10 Credits | |ASSIGNMENT |Assignment 1- The Role of Financial Resources – Costs & Budgets | |TUTOR NAME | | |STUDENT NAME | | |DATE ISSUED |Please refer to your scheme of work. Dates are recorded when handed out (as assignment is issued at different times | | |for different programmes). | |DEADLINE |Please refer to your scheme of work. Dates are recorded when assignment needs to be submitted (as assignment are to be| | |handed in at different times for different programmes). ...
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...MARGET JOBE 45230251 UNIT 2 P4 BUSINESS RESOURCES Asif & Sons Ltd EXTERNAL SOURCES OF FINANCE External sources of finance are found outside the business, eg from creditors or banks .External sources of finance can be short term, where it has to be paid within a year or long term where it has to be paid over a period of years. External Sources of finance for Asif & Sons will include: BANK LOAN/ OVERDRAFT ADDITIONAL PARTNERS SHARE ISSUE LEASING HIRE PURCHASE MORTGAGE TRADE CREDIT GOVERNMENT GRANTS Bank loan is funding that is obtained from a bank for short term or long term purposes. An overdraft facility is where a bank allows a firm to take out more money than it has in its bank account. For sole traders and partners this can be their savings. For companies, the funding invested by shareholders is called share capital. Share issue is the stock that the company sells publicly, in order to generate capital and it can also be the stock given to insiders as part of their compensation package. The amount of shares issued can be all or part of the total amount of authorised shares of the corporation. Hire purchase, is where monthly payments are made for use of equipment such as a car. Hired equipment is owned by the buyer after the final payment Leasing, is when monthly payments are made for use of equipment such as property. Leased equipment is rented and not owned by the buyer. A mortgage is a special type of loan for buying property, where monthly payments...
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...1) The iridium project was designed to create a worldwide wireless handheld mobile phone system with the ability to communicate anywhere in the world at any time. Iridium’s innovation was to use a large constellation of low-orbiting satellites and this could make the phones much smaller and the voice delay imperceptible.Dr.Leopard made a design in which the entire system would be inverted and only one gateway earth station would be required to connect mobile to landline calls to existing land bases telephone system. The general manager of the company believed in this project and viewed it as a potential symbol of technological prowess. The challenge also provided motivation for the engineers .In order to minimize exposure to financial risk, Iridium started as a project financed company. The 12 regional gateways made Iridium a global project and it made it easy to get regulatory approval to operate in 170 countries. Gateway owners were granted seats on the board of directors. Meetings were conducted between these 28 board members. Iridium also exposed Motorola in developing satellite technology that would provide significant expertise in building satellite communication systems and vast intellectual property. The design of Iridium network allows voice and data to be routed virtually anywhere in the world. They had excess satellites in the orbits which are ready to replace any unserviceable satellites. It ensured that every region of the globe is covered. Ground network is comprised...
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...Pioneer Petroleum Corporation’s (PPC) has been through a diverse amount of changes throughout the years. They were originally were a merger of several different independent firms operating in the oil refining, pipeline transportation, and industrial chemicals fields. PPC then integrated vertically into exploration and production of crude oil and marketing refined petroleum products, but horizontally into plastics, agricultural chemicals, and real estate development. They decided to restructure the company into a hydrocarbons-based company, concentrating on oil, gas, coal, and petrochemicals. They needed to decrease their overall risk and optimize their overall performance and would only be able to by collaboration and coordination among their refining and marketing network divisions. PPC were spending billions of dollars on capital expenditures and were expecting an increase in the next year. These expenditures were allowing for the company to process heavy Alaskan crude oil more efficiently and also provided good returns. In the next five years, the company was going to need to meet new environmental standards, which meant more spending increases. Along with these expenditures and regulations were expected higher growths because now the company truly could utilize and capitalize on their strength. PPC’s management and board are weighing out two alternative approaches in order to determine a minimum rate of return. They had to decide if a single cutoff rate based on the...
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...However, some routes make more sense than others depending on the specific company’s situation and objectives. Typically, a new business begins with something very simple: an idea. Sometime the individual spends years developing and tweaking the idea, and other times it simply comes to them in an instant. However it comes, once it does the entrepreneur needs to begin turning that idea into a more tangible concept. This almost always requires capital, whether for manufacturing a product, developing software, or hiring outside consultants to help develop the idea. There are many ways to acquire this capital. According to TechAloo, 63% of start-up phase funding comes from self financing and friends and family, 22% from banks, 9% from state finance corporations, 3% from angel investors, and another 3% from venture capitalists (See Exhibit 1). Initially, the new business owner typically begins by investing his or her own cash and assets into the business. Savings...
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...Math Refresher Course Introduction Math Refresher Course Welcome to this mini-course on quantitative methods. This self-study mini-course is for those who wish to refresh their math skills prior to taking F530 Financial Management for Insurance Leaders. If you were unsuccessful in passing the math skills assessment for F530, this mini-course will remind you about skills you would have learned in senior high school math and will need for F530. If you have little math background, you will likely need to engage additional resources such as finding a tutor or reading additional texts. If you have difficulty with specific areas, resources are listed at the end of each module for follow-up. 2011 The Insurance Institute of Canada Math Refresher: Introduction 1 Math Refresher Course • Please ensure that you complete the questions as you move through the refresher mini-course. Unless you do the questions before checking the solutions, it is unlikely that you will get full value from this course. Solutions can be found at the end of each module. You will require a financial calculator to complete this course. The calculator currently being recommended for F530 is Texas Instruments BA II Plus. • 2011 The Insurance Institute of Canada Math Refresher: Introduction 2 The Insurance Institute of Canada Math Refresher Course Introduction Math Refresher Course • Included with this mini-course are three chapters from Jerome, F. Ernest. Business Mathematics...
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...Financial Planning BA101 Kimberly Bernard What is financial planning for a business why is it important, and what can happen if not done accurately. Financial planning is simply planning for the future of a business to ensure there will be positive cash flow in the years to come. Financial management is essential because it will either make or break a business or company, if you start a business without putting a plan in affect and just start spending or making decisions this can be costly. Having a plan in place will help you set and achieve financial goals. A business’s priority when creating a financial plan should be accurate cash management. Accurate cash management will also help the business see if there could be the potential for a cash shortage during any particular time of the year. This is a crucial part of the plan, let’s just say a business is having an employee outing or event and they don’t have a financial plan in place, what will happened? The business can put them into debt or not have enough cash flow to fund the event, this would be an embarrassment for the business or they would have to find other means to funding the event like having the employees pay a percentage of the event. This would tell the employees one thing, that the company doesn’t have enough cash to even offer an employee outing or an event without the help of the workers, I know I wouldn’t want to work for a company that would ask for help for an event that they are planning. Another important...
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...Ethics Case One ethical lesson from this article, is when something is wrong, one should speak up and let their voice about the issue be heard. A second lesson from this case is that a lot of times middle management does not report all of the facts to top management in order for critical decisions to be made. Finally, a third ethical lesson from this case is to tell the truth about effects of decisions or information being presented, so that way it is true and unbiased. All three of the above listed lessons are relevant to someone who decides to enter into the accounting profession. This is because as accounts, one of our duties is to provide accurate and timely information in order for decisions by investors, creditors, and internal managers to be made. Most all of the ethical lessons that were discussed in the case were based on misleading information, or information that was inaccurate when trying to make a final decision. The decisions discussed in the case were not made in order to help make decisions; rather top managers were trying to save themselves and their reputations. The first ethical lesson pulled from the case was that when there is information that is misrepresented or wrongly described, one should not hesitate to speak up. Whether you are looking over information from peers on your own level or information from top-level management or anyone higher in a company than you, one should be able to speak up to misrepresented information. As someone going...
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...Google’s Cash Management Google Inc., the world’s largest searching engine operator, has huge cash amount during operation. According to the news on Bloomberg, the company wants to keep money on hand in order to be able to invest quickly when needed, (2013). On Feb 28th, Patrick Pichette, Chief Financial Officer of Google, disclosed the company’s strategy to retain its “strategic ability to pounce” at a Morgan Stanley conference. In general, Google wants to maintain the ability of quick acquisition in cash to make the investment more sufficient, just like the $12.5 billion acquisition of Motorola in 2011(Pichette, 2013). At the end of 2012, Google had $48.1 billion in cash and short-term investment, and the number increased to $44.4 billion on Jun 30th, 2013(Yahoo, 2013). Patrick Pichette also mentioned that the accumulating money on hand might increase the pressure to return more to shareholder, but Google thought preparing for future investment was the best use of money for shareholders(2012). In addition, while the cash is increasing, Google keeps most of its cash overseas to reduce its tax bill, and in order to avoid large transfer fee, Google mostly uses the foreign cash outside the United States (Washington Times, 2013). Basically, Google’s cash management strategy shows the company’s stress on speculative purposes of cash, which enable the company to quickly take advantage of bargains, discounts, new investments, shifts in interest rates and...
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...The Balanced Scorecard What is it? Definition: * The Balanced scorecard is a management system that enables organizations to clarify their vision and strategy and translate them into action. * Scorecard allows for actionable terms derived from company strategy. * Makes it easier for management to carry out strategy. * “A system that balances the historical accuracy of financial numbers with the drivers of future performance, while also assisting organization in implementing their strategies” * The term “Scorecard” signifies quantified performance measures and “Balanced” signifies the system is balanced between: * Short-term and long term objectives * Financial and non-financial measures * Internal and external performance perspectives When it started… * Developed in the early 1990's by Drs. Robert Kaplan and David Norton. * The Balanced Scorecard is the most commonly used framework for ensuring that agencies execute their strategies. * Today, about 70% of the Fortune magazine 1,000 companies utilize the Balanced Scorecard to help manage performance. The Balanced Scorecard Why do it? In just 90 days, Sandia Labs was able to redirect $190,000 in savings by dropping initiatives that didn’t fit their overall strategy. “The BSC has forced our management team to focus beyond financial measures… too often in the past we would get sucked into short-term thinking.” “The BSC dramatically improved our data analysis…...
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...Financial Management Challenges David Meszler BUS 650 Managerial Finance Prof. Kevin Kuznia July 29, 2013 To understand the challenges that face a financial manager today it is important to understand the general characteristics of market structures and the impact of market liquidity, competitiveness, and efficiency on financial managers. Clarifying market structures will show the basic constructs that financial managers work under. With the basic understanding of market structures and how they influence financial managers or how financial managers influence their given market structures we will identify two problems that are faced in current markets chosen from two Proquest articles, the first problem discussed will be communication issues and we will follow that up with a larger issue, the global economic recession. In discussing these issues we will also hit on how managers can possibly address those issues according to those articles. Market structures are fundamental in understanding how the economy works and how goods and/or services are exchanged. There are four basic market structures; perfect competition, monopolistic competition, oligopoly, and monopoly. Perfect competition is when there are numerous sellers with no difference in the product, no cost to enter or exit the market, and there is no influence on price. The most common type of market structure is a monopolistic competition market. In this type of market there are numerous sellers with little...
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...The Bourland Companies MSIRE Real Estate Finance Prof. Dr. Zhonghua Wu Gerardo Gato Agustin “Gus” Quevedo Cal Santangelo Lilia Tome Maria Carolina Vivas May 15, 2011 The Bourland Company The Bourland Company is a Real Estate family business located in Boston, Massachusetts that has always been very conservative run by Glen Bourland and never has taken unnecessary risks especially on the level of leverage it uses. It has grown very fast during the eighties and expanded from developing just multifamily properties to developing office and retail premises around Boston and the South area of New Hampshire. Fortunately, thanks to the coincidence that Glen Bourland decided to retire to Florida and delegate the control of the business to his son Michael, the company stopped to development in 1989 and also made some good sales before the market collapsed and was able to resist, in a better and stable way than other developers, the early 1990’s financial crisis. However, in 1991, Glen returned to his business as a Chairman of the company but delegated the day-to-day operations to his son. Glen’s daughter planned to move back to Boston and join the family business, adding more pressure on Michael’s decisions. In 1995, the company was doing well but had to refinance two distressed properties that were bought in 1992 and, because the credit crunch, just were able to get 3 years “miniperm” loans from Bank of Boston. Michael...
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