The Three Companies Chosen are Oracle, Statoil and BIM

OBJECTIVE

to provide a structured strategic and financial analysis of a number of companies of your choice and to write up your findings

WHAT YOU HAVE TO DO

Imagine that you have decided to form a ‘Shareholders Club'. This is an informal arrangement where you will contribute about €1,000 each to invest in equity shares of selected companies. You decide that it would be useful to compare three companies in which you are thinking of investing and to find out more about them. The companies should be from different industries. You are aware that they all produce an annual report and financial statements. You get hold of a copy of these documents, as you have read somewhere that they are intended to provide information useful for making economic decisions.

In order to provide a comparative analysis in a structured way, you decide to put together a report that will identify those issues that appear relevant to your investment decision. The report should include the decision on whether or not to invest in any of the chosen companies, giving reasons for the decisions.

WHAT YOU WILL SUBMIT

You must get access to a copy of the latest three annual reports and accounts of each company (these should be for the two most recent financial years). Larger, quoted companies tend to produce more informative annual reports than smaller, unquoted ones. Also use later interim accounts if these are available.

It is for you to decide what information is relevant and what to include in your report. It is often useful to consider the following. (a) What strengths and weaknesses are apparent from the review of the annual reports? (b) What key performance measures may be relevant to the companies and are these reported? If so, how have the companies done against stated objectives? If not, can key performance measures be computed and analysed between the three companies? (c) What information is provided about future prospects and strategies for improvement? Are these consistent with reported results and other available information?

You do not have to limit your sources of information to the annual reports. Your report may deal with non-financial issues as well as financial ones. However, your report must include an analysis of the financial position and performance of the chosen companies.

Please give a list of specific references when you use data sources from either the annual / interim reports or from any other sources that you use. The Harvard System of referencing should be used. Please note that I want specific references to data and quotations and NOT a general bibliography!