Finance & Accounting Essays

The paper "Eurocurrency or Offshore Financial Market" is a good example of a finance and accounting case study. A Eurocurrency refers to any foreign currency-dominated deposit or account with a financial institution outside the country of the currency’s issuance. As often misunderstood, the euro prefix does not imply that these currencies or accounts are European.

In addition to producing earnings from exports, international trade enables firms to acquire resources that are not available in the domestic market. However, risks increase when firms operate outside of the domestic market, despite the fact that a firm may use a number of methods for effecting export transactions. Direct export, export through an agent, or export by the establishment of branches and subsidiaries are ways in which firms export.

Usually, the business plan serves as a “sales” document, in that it is selling the business to a prospective investor or to a finance provider such as a bank as a good investment/risk.  The basic requirements for this function are the same, although the former will focus on a rate of return for the investor, while the latter will focus on the affordability of the loan required.

Critical to the healing process is the immediate determination of the areas where clients are significantly disturbed. Life experiences, compared to distorted beliefs, take ample time to be discovered and unraveled. Hence, it assumes that cognitive resolution is more speedy and reliable, as it targets specific areas of emotional disturbance.

The purpose of Annual Accounts is to convey a true and fair view of the financial health of a company which can be achieved if there is uniformity in accounting procedures and principles followed by business entities. This is more pertinent in the case of multinational companies like Cadbury that operate across frontiers. 

The performance of the pros versus the Dow Jones Industrial Average was less impressive. The pros barely edged the DJIA by a margin of 51 to 49 contests”. An investor simply parking their money in the Dow would have beaten the specific picks of the professionals about half the time, even without transaction costs or taxes.

Medical fitness standards are dealt with in Chapter I/9; Chapter VI/6 mandates the minimum requirements for security-related `awareness‘ and `familiarisation‘ training and instruction for all seafarers, with or without security duties, which are validated appropriately through `Certificates of Competency or Proficiency‘ based upon positions held.

In the banking industry, it is hoped that the impending accounting reforms will lessen the opportunities to engage in earnings management which experts agree can usually occur in the areas of estimates, accruals, and reserves (ibid.) which apply to banks in particular when they set up reserves for probable losses from bad debts or loans.

If accountants become more open to the idea of including the subjective elements they take pains to exclude, then a great deal of the problems and discrepancies caused by subjective decision-making could be eradicated – as the situation currently stands, these problems will remain because the objective output simply cannot bring light to them.

The accounting standards based on the Islamic principles, such as the AAOIFI standards, that are do not adhere to the concepts of substance over form and time value of money are likely to call for the lease of the asset and its sale to be accounted as two different transactions still if both the transaction is in coincidence with one another. 

After deriving all the overhead figures, the cost of production figure helps us to find out the per-unit cost of production and which is then applied to the opening and closing stock of finished goods to know their value. They are further included in the cost sheet to arrive at the cost of goods sold figures.

When consolidated financial statements are to be prepared, either the parent or a subsidiary may have reasons for preparing separate financial statements. It is worth mentioning that ED 10 expresses that reasons for exerting power to control the activities need not be through control of majority voting rights. 

The author states that fixed in the United Kingdom by the British Bankers Association, these interbank interest rates pertain to loans that have maturities ranging from overnight to twelve months. LIBOR is slightly higher than the London Interbank Bid Rate (LIPID), the rate at which the same banks are prepared to accept deposits.

The paper also contains the reasons and purposes of recent nomenclature changes in the financial statements. An accounting conceptual framework has been defined by AT Foulks Lynch as a “coherent system of interrelated objectives and fundamentals that should lead to consistent standards that prescribe the nature, function, and limits.

As a consequence, it is almost inevitable that there is an integration of financial reporting standards, given the globalized world in which these economic and political factors become more and more important in the context of business, and therefore in the context of accounting practices and reporting. 

The Vasicek’s model lacked the practical application because of the fact that it assumed that the interest rates go negative and as such the asset values can touch infinity. This weakness was though overcome by the CIR which extended the theoretical assumptions of the Vasicek’s model to further broaden the applicability of the model.

ABC has evolved over the years and has gradually given rise to ABM. The recent trend in the world business shows a gradual trend of adhering to customer-oriented services. This has resulted in businesses obliging to customer needs and providing them with what they want. Increased competition means that high prices cannot be charged without giving up on quality.

Marginal costing could also be said to be “An accounting technique whereby the effect on costs of a small increment or decrease in output may be estimated. Assuming that the change in output does not affect the elements comprising fixed costs, the marginal cost will be the variable cost per unit of output.” 

The business manager would need to consider that even though advertising is helpful (positive correlation), it does not hold a strong relationship with resulting sales (mildly positive correlation). This may result in a review of the advertising strategy and possibly better coordination between the sales and advertising teams.

In most cases, auditors are considered to have the role of detecting fraud, but it is not actually the primary role of an auditor. They are only tasked to look at the financial statements of the company, express an opinion on whether it is truly and fairly represented and make sure that it is free from errors (Day, 2006, p.20). 

Numerous legislatures, laws, rules, and regulations have been enacted to ensure that trust in this industry remains and honored. One of these laws focuses on the protection of data accumulated by banks about their customers. The question, however, is these laws on data protection adequate in addressing the needs of banks and customers in a global economy.

The details of a balance sheet may not be easily understood. It is the responsibility of an expert forensic accounting witness to ensure that the details are understood. For example, the details on how a balance sheet may be manipulated may not be obvious and thus, the use of a diagram that is well constructed could be better than the use of conventional question-answer method.

 Some experts suggested that there should be some restriction on the total compensation paid to the CEO by limiting it to a maximum of 30 to 40 times the salary of an average worker in the company, while the additions to the CEO's salary due to downsizing of the rest of the staff must be minimized or completely eliminated.

The external auditors verify the accuracy of the accounting information presented by the company. In the process, they scrutinize the financial records of the company and give comments on the truthfulness of the disclosures made by the company. This assures the investors about the efficient utilization of their financial resources (Fan, Wong, 2001).

Financial decisions need to be taken based on investment appraisal techniques. The financial decision-makers need to consider the payback period, accounting rate of return and the net present value of the investment. Since there are both advantages and limitations for all these methods, all methods need to be considered for taking an appropriate decision.

The management of WaMu persisted with the subprime lending strategy ignoring prudence and fiduciary responsibilities. Customers were put under the illusion of the ability to pay off their debts. In its pursuit of growth and short term gains, WaMu ignored threats to its overall business in the event of an economic downturn, which indeed did take place by 2008.

Since the beginning of the 20th century, Antitrust Acts have been prevalent in the United States. The most important act is the Sherman Antitrust Act in 1890. According to the Sherman Antitrust Act, it is illegal to form a cartel, fix prices and allocate territories, and also to attempt to monopolize trade.

In view of the evaluation and analysis of the applicable provisions of the Internal Revenue Code, as these pertain to the facts at issue, the conclusion is that the gain from the distribution of the property of Subsidiary Corporation to Parent Corporation should not be recognized for income tax purposes.

The author states that it is often argued that the current business environment is relatively more volatile and the basis of competition has largely changed. Firms now need to prepare themselves for the volatile markets and fierce competition and as such the preparation for such times holds the key to achieve the necessary stability.

Bunbury (2007, p.1) states that “overhead cost is one of the dominating factors of modern industry”. Feinberg (2006) defines overhead cost in simplest terms as “those expenses that do not vary with your production level”. It can also be said that overhead costs are the indirect recurring costs of running a firm or a business.

The paper "Exploitation of the Insurance Industry for Money Laundering: The Malaysian Perspective" is a good example of a finance and accounting case study. The insurance sector plays a major role in ensuring that there is an improvement in the economic growth of a nation (Shanmugam, 2008). They do have similar responsibilities as institutional investors and load providers.

The paper "Bank Resolution Costs, Depositor Preference, and Asset by Daniel Hardy" is a good example of a finance and accounting article. Businesses operate in environments that are characterized by many risks. Economic risks are one of the major threats that businesses are exposed to as was seen during the recent economic, financial crisis.

The paper "Bank Failures and Regulation, Systemic Risk Measurement" is a great example of a finance and accounting coursework. There are agreements that exist between academics and responsible specialists which the forthcoming regulatory environment ought to push financial organizations to interiorize the negative externalities which they produce from time to time throughout the economy (Petitjean, 2013).

The paper 'Theories Explaining the Origin of Managerial Accounting" is a great example of finance and accounting coursework. Many organizations in the 21st century are increasingly paying attention to managerial accounting as well as financial accounting. Managerial accounting generally refers to the process of determining, measuring, evaluating, and interpreting accounting information in order to achieve organizational goals and objectives.

The paper "The UK Banking Industry" is a good example of a finance and accounting assignment. Stakeholders are individuals, groups whom organizations have obligations, rights and normative rationale for moral duties and they include the following; the state, public, business, shareholders and employees.

The paper 'Stakeholders and How They Are Affected by Financial Crisis" is a good example of a finance and accounting assignment. There are a number of stakeholders involved in the reported financial situation. They include banks, the UK national government, the small and large companies, individual customers in the bank, and investors.

The paper "Yale University's Investments" is a perfect example of a finance and accounting case study. With endowments in billions of dollars, and what had long been touted as conservative spending policies, many observers were surprised by how difficult the financial crisis was for universities like Harvard, Yale and Stanford.

The author states that although the concept has gained wide acceptance both in the academic world and in practice because of earlier studies that provide strong empirical support, it has been refuted by other scholars because of its weaknesses. These weaknesses commonly arise from the model's failure to explain the average returns.

The standard says that a lease is classified as a Finance lease if “The Present Value of the minimum lease payments equals to a substantial part of the fair value of the leased asset”. On the contrary, FAS-13 prescribes the bright lines that are 75% or 90%  thresholds for the determination of the type of leases.

The decline of the superannuation funds is caused by the financial crisis that affected banks, industries, and investors worldwide. Australia has invested in growth assets in the United States and was hit by the market failure in the U.S. properties. The financial losses in these investments have caused the decline of assets of the fund.

The external performance of the bank is evaluated based on different factors. The three main indicators include market share, regulatory compliance, and public confidence. The regulatory compliance is analyzed in terms of capital, lending, and securities of the bank whereas, the public confidence can be analyzed through deposit insurance and public image.

There are also several other deficiencies in the accounting system such as treatment of bad debts, stock option plan treatment, and the existence of deferred taxes. A new metric that is better suited to evaluate the performance of companies is EVA.  EVA can be used to calculate the economic profits of a business.

In the course of analyzing the various internal and external variables and relating them to the banking institution’s performance, there must be a construct by which the logical relationships of these explanatory variables (financial ratios and macroeconomic indicators) may be related to the dependent variable (profitability).

Today accounting jobs have become easier than ever before because of the accounting information system. Although to utilize accounting information system properly accountants are required to be more knowledgeable not only about the accounting system but also the accounting software which is used in processing the financial information.

The author states that the bank was first formed through the Royal Bank of Scotland’s acquisition of the National Westminster Bank in February 2000. Due to the ‘credit crisis’ which has actually led to the collapse of the sub-prime market in America, HM treasury has taken over 70.33 % of the organization.

An academic study realized by Pierce & Kilcommings (1996) came to the conclusion that people who have taken at least one auditing course in college do not consider the auditor expectation gap an issue. This fact which was proved by the investigators with a confidence interval of 0.05 can be used by the accounting profession as a hint that education is the best route to solve the problem.

This would help the investor to identify the streams that are the best generators of value in order to arrive at decisions on the enhancement of property value. Furthermore, all information required for the valuation process is likely to be available from accounts and there is no need to refer to valuation tables containing data that may not be relevant in every specific situation.

Internal audit plays a very important role in bringing certain improvements that affect the efficiency and performance of the company in meeting the main objectives of the company. AS per the annual report 2007of the company “this committee reviews the overall scope, the annual plans, and budget for internal audit activities and see alignment risk management and internal audit activities.”

The financial analysis of performance, liquidity position, efficient working, and capital structural approach of Rio Tinto has resulted in a conclusion that the company under the pressure of acquiring a subsidiary had put a dismal show in the year 2007. In fact, the company put is a performance of 2007 at stake for the purpose of acquisition of the subsidiary.

The discounted cash flow method takes cognizance of both time and profit.  It is based on the premise that an investment of cash in a project is made on the expectation of receiving over a period of years enough cash not only to cover the original investment but also to yield a profit, that is, there will be more cash than the cash outflow.