Research Based Case Study and Report:
Financial Reporting Disclosures in the Australian Corporate Sector
As a new accounting graduate, you have just joined the financial reporting unit of a listed company* when your manager, the Chief Financial Officer (CFO), approaches you with your first task.
In their last meeting, the board members of your company is concerned about the company's reputational standing in the market relating to the quality of financial information in the annual report and keen to ensure that asset values are appropriately reflected and disclosed in the company's latest annual report.
Therefore, the Board decided to have a review of the relevant treatments and disclosures in the company's latest annual report pertaining to impairment and whether these treatments and disclosures are aligned with the requirements for impairment as per AASB 136.
Required:
Based on the Board's decision, the CFO asks you to draft a business research report addressed to the Board of Directors on the following:
a. Provide a detailed explanation of the impairment write-down(s) made by your company in the year ended 30 June 2017. Your explanation should include a discussion of the asset/s that were impaired, the amount of the impairment write-down, the indicators of impairment and relevant disclosures in the 30 June 2017 financial report in relation to impairment testing.
b. A critical analysis of some of the complexities and key issues involved in impairment testing. In your analysis, you can refer to one or more publications issued by the ‘Big 4' firms, accounting professional bodies or academic journals.
c. Critically analyse to what extent the latest annual report of your company meets the disclosure requirements for Impairment as per AASB 136.
d. Based on your findings in part c, critically discuss to what extent the disclosures on impairment align with the objective of general purpose financial reporting and, as a conclusion, recommend actions for improvement.
*You need to choose a suitable company by yourself from:
1. is constituent of the S&P/ASX 300 index
2. publishes audited annual reports in English, fully complying with IAS/IFRS or AASB;
3. must have a 30 June year end; and
4. does NOT belong to the financial sector.
You are required to follow the detailed instructions on the next page.
Research Based Case Study and Report Instructions
Formal requirements:
Structure: Include your own designed report cover page (including your full name, student number, company selected for review and date of financial report, your Lecturer's name and the day and time of the seminar, attached to the front of your assignment), a table of contents, an executive summary and a list of references. You may include an appendix if necessary.
Length: The minimum total word length of the assignment is 1,200 and the maximum total word length is 1 600 words. Cover page, table of contents and appendices will not be counted in the word count. Please write the number of words used in the assignment after the table of contents.
Font/print: The assignment should be one and a half spaced in ‘Times New Roman' font type and font size 12.
Referencing: You are expected and required to use references to support your report, for example, accounting standards and other reporting guidelines, journal articles and other academic literature if necessary. Any sources of information that you have used must be referenced using the Harvard Referencing System.