Finance

Summary: Review and compare the financial statements and annual reports of The Home Depot and of Lowe’s companies Inc. of fiscal year 2012, in comparison to fiscal 2011, according to the below structure and questions: Analyze the balance sheet of both companies. Write a summary that includes important points about each company that an analyst would use in assessing the financial condition of The Home Depot and of Lowe’s as one of its competitors. Analyze the income statement of The Home Depot and of Lowe’s. Write a summary that includes important points that an analyst would use in assessing the profitability of The Home Depot and of Lowe’s as one of its competitors. Analyze the consolidated statements of cash flows for The Home Depot and for Lowe’s for fiscal years 2012, 2011 and 2010. Write a summary that includes important points that an analyst would use in assessing the companies’ relative abilities to generate cash flows and the appropriateness of the use of cash flows Using data, common size statements, ratio and trend calculations for The Home Depot and Lowe’s, write a comprehensive comparative analysis of the companies over the major areas: Short term liquidity, operating efficiency, capital structure and long term solvency, and profitability. Perform the Dupont analysis and compare variation of The Home Depot and Lowe’s ROE, Return on Equity, as the combined effect of profitability, liquidity, and financial leverage.

Dorchester, Inc. has asked you to help forecast exchange rates for the three potential countries you have selected for your proposal. In a four page paper (excluding title and reference pages), plot the exchange rates from the past year in each of the three countries. Identify and describe any patterns that can be seen. What are the possible explanations for these patterns? What exchange rates do you predict for 1 year from now? In addition to the requirements above, your paper: Must be double-spaced and 12 point font. Must be formatted according to APA style. Must reference two scholarly resources in addition to the textbook. Must include a reference page written in APA format.

This week you were introduced to managerial accounting and cost methods. Discuss the differences between fixed, mixed and variable costs and provide examples. Why is it important for managers to understand these costs?

Write a two-page paper that explains financial accounting and the role of financial accounting in a corporate environment. Use the Keiser cover page (in the Start Here menu) and a reference page and use at least three credible references. Be sure to format the paper in APA 7th edition format. You may find this link helpful

Articles from 2009 – present only. Use your online library. No Wikipedia, BLOGS with Ads from Yahoo, UK Essay Buzzle.com, or sites that challenge as they present a biased opinion. Google Scholar is accepted.

You should also use the Writing Studio

This paper is about financial crisis in US during 2007 to 2008. This paper was divided to several parts originally, like the causes of the financial crisis and the impacts of the financial crisis. But I just need one question. The professor told me that I need to come up with a question and answer this question as the topic of this paper. Like “what causes the financial crisis?” or “what the impacts of the financial crisis?” If you choose one question to write, the other parts you just need to mention in short paragraphs. I upload the essential requirements to you, you still need to use at least five references, and at least two of them must be peer-reviewed.

Assigned Discussions:
1. For the assigned company, prepare a working capital analysis (adequacy of amounts of working capital, cash conversion cycle, and financing strategy). Remember, working capital is current assets and is not to be confused with net working capital, which is current assets minus current liabilities. Please read the attached Intro file and download on your computer two Excel models provided below. The first Excel model is a tool to examine Working Capital Financing Strategy. The second Excel model contains calculations of Cash Conversion Cycle. You will enter the required information for your assigned company into the yellow cells. Please attached both Excel files completed for your assigned company to your answers. Please don’t forget to analyze the results you received using these two models.
/content/enforced/240316-M_001119-01-2175/1 Examining WC Fin Strategy Intro 0916.docx
/content/enforced/240316-M_001119-01-2175/2 Examining Working Capital Financing 1215.xlsx
/content/enforced/240316-M_001119-01-2175/3 Cash Conversion Cycle 030615.xls

2. What are the most important things that you learned from the study of this week’s readings and assignments? Remember to always include appropriate references.

Only using the article provided as a source. Create a discussion for the following topic:

The credit rating is a financial indicator to potential investors of debentures such as. These are assigned by credit rating agencies such as Moody’s, Standard & Poor’s, and Fitch Ratings to have letter designations (such as AAA, B, CC) which represent the quality of a bond. Bond ratings below BBB-/Baa are considered to be not investment grade and are colloquially called junk bonds.

Please read the article ” U.S. Sues Standard Poor’s Over Ratings “: and answer the following question:

Why is credit rating so important?
What’s your take away of this article?

Guidelines for Case study analysis Report

How to address the assignment requirements:

The student will be required to:

Review the current literature on consumer lending with emphasis on currentdevelopments.
Identify relevant issues relating to consumer lending bybanks.

You should read at least two research papers on each issue, analyse their findings and summarise their results of these research after critical analysis of each paper.Every one is required to discuss at least five of the nine issues mentioned below.

Some of the issues identified in the literature are:

Legal issues in consumer lending.

What are the laws and regulation in place for consumer lending and how these laws ensure that consumers are treated fairly in the market

Cite some laws, discuss their implications on the business of consumer lending by banks. Discuss some recent developments, particularly those relating to coronavirus.

Market for consumer lending – Demand, supply, availability of credit.

How the consumer lending market has been affected by changes in employment, economic factors such as migration, changes in peoples perception and attitudes.

Current trends in consumer lending- in Australia or world wide- look at some of the data available with regulatory agencies like RBA and analyse the trends, up and down of consumer lending of consumer lending business. Examine the reasons for these changes.

Pricing – Interest rates, fees, penalties.

How banks and service providers set interest rates and fees on various types of consumer loans. What are the reasons for charging penalties from the customers particularly for non repayment or default.

Responsible lending – What is responsible lending. How banks and regulators have set up the responsible lending and fair trading. Find evidence of compliance or non-compliance of these guidelines by the banks, examine the reasons for bank behaviour and resulting consequences for banks and customers

Discuss the development of various products in consumer lending such as different credit cards, motor vehicle loans, home loans, personal loans or any other type of loans. How banks differentiate their products from each other and meet the competition. Discuss the innovation of new products.

How consumer credit loan applications are analysed by banks. Discuss different types of Credit scoring models used. Development issues in these models. What are the assumption and effectiveness of these models.

Frauds in consumer lending.

Many consumer lending providers including banks have perpetrated frauds on customers in the area of consumer lending. Discuss some of these frauds, the reasons behind these frauds and how these frauds were handled by regulators or courts.

New forms of lending.

In the recent past some of the new avenues of consumer lending have been developed like fringe lending from cash converter, check loans, crowd funding etc.  As a result, loan sharks have been able to target customers. Describe some of these new developments, their effect on customers and consumer lending

Select one bank as your case bank and relate the issues identified through the literature review to the consumer lending business of thebank (A) selected by you. Critically analyse the consumer lending products and services of the bank in the area of consumer lending in terms of theliterature.
Compare and analyse the terms and condition of consumer lending products of your bank with the consumer lending products of anotherbank (B) on at least four products. This comparison should be done across four products of each bank. The comparison can be provided in the table form as under.

Products

Bank A

Bank B

Comparative Analysis

Credit cards

Interest rates

Type of cards

Interest free period

Fees

Repayment

Motor Vehicle Loans

Interest rates

Type of loans

Fees

Repayment Period

Collateral

Terms and conditions

Home Loans

Interest rates

Type of loans

Fees

Repayment Period

Collateral

Terms and conditions

Personal Loans

Interest rates

Type of loans

Fees

Repayment Period

Collateral

Terms and conditions

Draw appropriate conclusions from the comparison in regard to delivery of consumer credit product of each bank in terms of the literature and in and provide recommendations based onthe your analysis.

Requirements for the report

Length:  3000 words 

Format: Typed using 1½ or double line spacing with a 2.5cms margin on all sides.

Requirements:  The report  should include an executive summary and a list of references using  Harvard citation   

Assessment Criteria/Marking Guidelines

The assessment of the essay will be based on the following:

 Executive Summary                                                                         (2 Marks)

Overview of the whole report in 150-200 words

Structure and Presentation                                                              (2 Marks)      

Structure of the report
Cohesion between paragraphs
Adherence to formatting guidelines

Contents and arguments presented critically on various issues

Demonstrable critical analysis and evaluation of the literature reviews
Comparison of products and services of the banks A and B on consumer lending
How each issue is addressed, discussed and analysed.
Logical and coherent conclusions drawn from comparison between banks A and B relating to the literature and                                                      (22  Marks)

Writing Style                                                                                      (2 Marks)

Clear & concise language
No grammatical mistakes

References and Citations                                                                  (2 Marks)

Reference List (Harvard)

A minimum of 10-12 references required in all. References on different issues should be provided as mentioned above. References should be from academic literature such as journal articles or evidence based articles.

1. Options Strategy: Using the readings and/or other sources (e.g.,  select an option investing or hedging strategy for a foreign exchange currency, a single stock or equity index that you would like to explore. Then, find a current option(s) price quotation that you would use to implement the strategy that you selected. After designing the options strategy, you should:

(a) Explain the strategy and the option contract(s) that you selected to implement it, along with the current price quotation(s).

(b) Discuss your expectations about how the transaction will perform from implementation to expiration.

2. Identify a website (not previously identified) that deals with the valuation and use of options?

(a) What valuable information is provided by this website?

(b) Explain, with specific examples, how the website is useful to investors and analysts?

Assigned Discussions:

For the assigned company, prepare a working capital analysis (adequacy of amounts of working capital, cash conversion cycle, and financing strategy). Remember, working capital is current assets and is not to be confused with networking capital, which is current assets minus current liabilities.  Please read the attached Intro file and download on your computer two Excel models provided below. The first Excel model is a tool to examine Working Capital Financing Strategy. The second Excel model contains calculations of Cash Conversion Cycle. You will enter the required information for your assigned company into the yellow cells. Please attached both Excel files completed for your assigned company to your answers. Please don’t forget to analyze the results you received using these two models.