Finance & Accounting Essays

This will help gain a clear idea of what the article’s main purpose, hypotheses, and findings are. This will be followed by a critical discussion of the findings and the limitations of the research. However, before moving into these aspects of the article, it is essential to view the importance of this article. The next section will deal with the importance of the article in the field of the study and the reasons for choosing this article.

In a bid to make ‘pension’ an important savings instrument the government has raised the Annual Allowance to £255000 from the fiscal year 2010/11. The employers’ contribution towards personal or company pension schemes will lower the amount of taxable business profits as these contributions will be allowed as a tax deductible expense. This is good from the viewpoint of the employees as well as it lowers their burden of tax bill.

A budget is defined as an itemized summary of estimated or intended expenditures for a given period along with proposals for financing them (Yahoo, 2007). Budgeting is an accounting mechanism that serves the purpose of a control device that helps the organization plan the future utilization of economic resources. 

Despite limitations, technical analysis is a useful technique for anticipating and projecting price and volume values for financial assets. It can assist market players in whether to hold on, buy, and sell assets that can be helpful in promoting affluence and prosperity. Technical analysis can also be used as an indicator of the economy's health based on price and resistance levels of markets.

This report will chiefly focus on the contribution of various entities to the capital market. The historical performances of their activities will also be figured out. Since the last decades, significant changes have been registered in the Australian capital market which makes it increasingly important to examine the evolution of the modern regulations and rules. This will help to generate qualitative findings. 

As the marketing, production, and organization plans, the financial plan is an important part of the business. Financial planning determines the potential investment commitment needed for a new business. There is also better management of selling expenses. This is a positive effect of better financial planning.

A budget possesses different definitions depending on the user.  For an accountant, a budget is “a summary statement of plans expressed in quantitative terms; it guides individuals or an accounting entity in reaching financial or operational goals.”

Price wars benefit neither the different stakeholders nor the company nor the society. Price wars can occur in monopolies, oligopolies, or fragmented markets. Switching costs are high which affects the dealers and resellers. Some models suggest that a price war occurs during an economic downturn while it can also occur during good times.

Ratio Analysis is an important tool to convert the financial statements of companies into common statements and to assess the performance of the company over a period of years. This allows us to see the financial trend of a company. This also allows us to look at various aspects of the company, such as Profitability, Liquidity, Financial Leverage and how well is it carrying out its operations. 

For all the theories formulated and models structured to attempt to explain the movement of market prices, there is no consistently accurate formula for it.  Similarly, no rational observation would constantly apply to the way investors behave in the course of the daily activities in the financial markets. 

As regards the international tax problems created by electronic commerce, OECD also has its views on trading through e-commerce. Due to electronic commerce, a person can carry on business with any country or in any country without being a resident of that country. OECD has stressed on effective management in this context.

The Audit methodology would involve planning of checklist of samples to be collected, on-site sampling, physical visits, verification of papers & electronic records, and interviewing. If the auditors detect serious risks, they would be included in the scope detailing the nature & extent and request for an increase of Man-days shall be put forward.

Study elaborates adequately about the recent action of Australian Government regarding giving the guarantee to the deposits, its advantages and some disadvantages.  Since the time of Adam Smith, market economies have evolved enormously. Advance capitalist economies, such as the United States, Western Europe and Japan have three distinguishing features: Trade and specialization, money and capital.

The preceding chapter provided the problem and its background to situate the topic of research and provide appropriate direction for the research design.  Pursuit of the research problem and questions are qualified by the existing literature on the topic of valuation, risk assessment, and failure forecasting.

In the process, cost-effective innovative measures may be introduced in the process such as the employment of modern technology in handling projects and project costs. Costing methods are of fundamental importance since a better method put in place supports the estimation of project costs that is the basic component towards the generation of cost budgets. Cost budgets are important for planning as a function of any formal organization.

From the evaluation, it is evident that the adoption of IPSAS and other modern commercial stands by central governments will increase accountability and transparency in the public sector thereby helping to ensure public sector reforms. Moreover, their adoption will appeal to investors and the public and enhance the process of decision making within the government. However, this transformation is not a one-off event.

These assumptions help analysts and researchers evaluate their field of data, statistics, and draw certain almost predictable evaluations. There can be many conditions differing from situation to situation which could justify the use of a quantitative model. Generally, in most cases, there are certain three distinct states that can generally require the usage of a quantitative model.

Obama’s tax policies are more equitable and fairer in my opinion but they still do not go far enough to encourage growth to lead America into the future in this current changing economic environment. McCain’s proposals simply went in the wrong direction because it entailed much less revenue for the government.  

The accounting standard setters for both the United States and the United Kingdom have always implied that the stakeholders are the ones who should actually benefit from standards. However, both standard setters fell short “of giving a definition linked to the public interest” due in part to the changing definition of the ‘true and fair view’ phrase.

The main problem of the corporation is no standard to measure the efficiency of each department on a monthly basis. As explained by the consultant, though the sales budget, operation budget and the marketing expanse budget all are correctly planned, still the company failed to achieve its sales and profit target. This indicates that the plans were not well executed due to a lack of coordination among different departments.

The above quote of the study indicates that the changes in the deposit rates by the UK banks are relatively rigid indicating that the banks are too strict in their dealing with depositors while setting the deposit rates.  However, the rate-setting on loan products is relatively more synchronized as large banks tend to have relatively more manipulate power.

Value creation to shareholders is the principal reason behind mergers and acquisitions which is why M&As purport to be expedient. However, the periodic statistical decrease of M&As involving UK companies in a span of 10 years indicates that M&As tend to emerge ineffective in the process. Most of them failed to render pre-merger goals and as such, resulted in financial failures. Indeed, there had been a lag in merger activity since the start of the decade. 

The initial investment, as estimated in the given data, amounts to £ 6,292,000. This will be invested in 2009 by FizBiz in order to set up the new building and plant. The marketing costs that amount to £ 1,000,000 will be incurred in the beginning of 2010 at the time of the launch and hence this cash outflow can be considered to occur in 2010. 

Accounting treatment of intangibles have evolved through the years, whether under GAAP or IFRS. The treatment of intangibles have important implications for how revenues and expenses are presented and it also opens the issue of possible manipulation of income statements in attempts to manage the earnings and thus deceive investors and other stakeholders.

Many opportunities exist for Tesco, one of them being the improvement of customer relationships. This customer relationship can be improved by encouraging the customer to make greener decisions. This way the company can enhance its image and be recognized as an environmentally friendly company.

It is important to have in mind that the findings of CAPM are valuable only under standardized market conditions – where the distance between the ideal market and the current market is not too long; otherwise, i.e. in markets that suffer from severe turbulences the findings of CAPM would not help to estimate the performance of investment – even at an average level.

The questions that often rise out of the public eye are those that stress the desire to know what advantage insider trading has economically, for it has thus far caused the public to feel unfair treatment. Consequently, as a moral decision the unfairness of insider trading in the public eye is, henceforth, unethical and should be illegal.   

Islamic “shariah - code of conduct” is based on Muslim’s Holy Book “Quran” and the sayings and traditions of the Prophet Mohammed, which preaches brotherhood and mutual interest in order to establish “just and equitable social order” in the society. Takaful insurance was introduced to minimize the risk by mutual agreement. 

There was a variance with the sales units for Product A. Product A was slated to sell 27500 units and make £690,000 which is a sales price of £25.09/unit. The actual number of units sold was 29000 and the total revenue was £720,000 which is a sales price of £24.83. The price difference causes a loss of revenue equal to £727,610. 

AASB 138 prescribes that an intangible asset item meets the strict definition and recognition criteria. It prescribes that the nature of intangible assets is such that, there are no additions or replacements of part of it. This results in subsequent expenditures which maintain the expected future economic benefits from an existing intangible asset.

The authors in their efforts to illustrate the importance of an effective development process for introducing new systems into SMEs; a case study on the development of TQM in SMEs was studied (Ghobadian and Gallear, 1997). This case study highlighted the critical issues when developing a new system within an SME.

The globalized financial system fuelled the vulnerabilities of economies to the Global Financial Crisis. Hong Kong’s trade performance was negatively influenced by the crisis and between 2007 and 2009, exports of the country declined significantly. The banking sector of the economy was also hit by the financial crisis and because of the significant contribution of Hong Kong’s banking sector to GDP, the overall economy also faced major shocks.

Inflation has to be present in an economy for it to grow however, it needs to be controlled and closely monitored and has to be addressed to while designing a monetary or fiscal policy for a country or preparing a financial budgeting policy for an organization or a country.

The bailout of AIG made news because it was the highest recipient of the Federal funds that were made available under the TARP or the Troubled Assets Relief Plan that was passed by the Federal government. The point of contention in bailing out AIG was that it was too big to fail and hence needed all the support that the Federal Government could extend.

The mindset of the employee influences their productivity. With the tool, employees feel more appreciated and entrusted. They, therefore, take such opportunities to learn leadership and management roles besides the obvious motivation. This way, the organization benefits increased efficiency and sustained operations.  

Overall, globalization has many benefits, because it represents free trade being chosen over domestic protectionism, which can lead to negative results. Only in a few countries (10 out of 34) did the majority of people consider globalisation a positive factor for local economic development.

There would be shortage of credit money in the economy resulting in decreased demand which would in turn lead to unemployment as firms would cut their supply. Individuals have a moral responsibility to try to pay their mortgages on time. If judging the option of strategic default purely on moral or ethical grounds then it is surely wrong to knowingly gobble up other people’s owed amount and hence should be avoided at all costs.

Public sector budgeting requires strict compliance while it is not mandatory to follow the budget recommendations line by line in the private sector. The private sector company’s success is always measured in terms of cash profit, while the public sector organizations' success is always measured based on performance (Corbett et al, 1996).  

There are a lot of studies conducted with regard to investment in a foreign subsidiary and most of the research point out that political and economic steadiness are essential circumstances to pull indirect investment from abroad. Country risks and environmental risks are other vital factors to be considered while making an investment in a foreign subsidiary. Country risk actually takes place in in the form of sovereignty risk or transfer risk.

Since there isn’t yet any actual and immense harm for implementing a single currency, it is not impracticable for UK to try and be one with the other European countries who have joined the euro trend. After all, all of them belong to the same continent, Europe. Whatever benefits they could get will ultimately help all the European countries.

The keyword that describes the external auditor is the independence of work and the unbiased and transparency of reports. The internal auditors are recruited by the companies. But the external auditors have much more responsibly on their shoulders to reveal the truth and facts of the firm (Singh, 2007, p. 154-155). 

In general, private equities are defined as “equity securities of companies that have not ‘gone public’ … generally illiquid and thought of as a long-term investment” (Private Equity, 2007).  Despite this seemingly restrictive definition, the industry has managed to return profits at much higher rates than firms operating in the public sphere while holding onto companies for sometimes only a span of a few years.  

This caused banks to face a difficult time after customers failed to repay their loans. The expectations of house owners dwindled, and many of them had to turn to other means of earning income as the houses were unable to fetch anything substantial as anticipated.  

The global economy has seen one of its toughest periods during the recent financial crisis. It’s been more than two years and the world economy is yet to completely recover from this turmoil. Unlike some of the previous crises this one is more global in nature and as a result of that effects of it are more significant. It has greatly impacted the operational models of multinational corporations.

To interpret information present in financial statements of various companies, analysts employ fundamental accounting concepts, which help them to form uniform assumptions while comparing performances among different companies. Therefore, in order to properly analyze and interpret financial statements, it is important to understand the meaning and implication of key accounting concepts.

Another component of the audit risk is that of the control risk. This is the risk that material misstatements, i.e. fraud and errors, will not be detected, prevented, and removed on an appropriate basis with the help of the internal controls. This risk also approaches the risk of weak internal control and needs extra attention from the auditors' point of view.

The currency board arrangement is defined. The costs and benefits of Hong Kong’s currency board system since 1983 is investigated before finally concluding. ‘Currency board arrangement is a special case of a rules-based monetary system. It is a system based on rules rather than discretion that serves to establish credibility. 

For the UK government, the takeover resulted in the creation of employment opportunities, improving living standards, technological skills acquisition, increased government revenue, and improvement in the skills levels of the population. Tax revenues increase due to materials importation, finished product exportation, and workers’ employment.

The G4+1 (US, Australia, New Zealand, and the UK) have called for the amendment of rules for effecting in these countries. We will study the balance sheet of two companies Leighton Ltd and Clough Ltd in the light of this paper. 

Sales must reconcile with the inventory in the same way that billing documents must agree with the shipping records. Though cost-cutting efforts may increase profit margins, setting it off with an obsolete inventory cannot generate as many sales returns as what Drea Tech reported in its income statement.