The decline of share listings in the United States has led to considerable debate over whether these trends represent a fundamental global business shift away from the publicly traded corporate form, or something that is more U.S.-centric combined with the economic times. Develop an argument to why the decline happened.

Two publicly traded companies are direct competitors. One has a beta of 1 and the other has a beta of 1.2. What is beta and how can I use this information as one component of stock evaluation? Compare the betas of two competing companies (you choose) and share the results and analysis

1. In 2008, one of your associates made a $100,000 investment in high-risk junk bonds of one of the marginal airlines in the US. The bonds had a stated interest rate of 14%, which was the market rate of these bonds when purchased. Over time, the fair value of these bonds has decreased, even though interest rates have decreased.

What has happened?

2. Dill Corporation, a publicly traded conglomerate, purchased in 2004 $50 million of the $100 million 30-year bond issue of Duff Inc. The bonds, which bear a stated interest rate of 6%, were purchased at par. When you examine the balance sheet of Dill, you noticed that the bonds are now listed at less than $50 million. You also noticed a reduction of total stockholders’ equity relating to these same bonds. However, when you looked at Duff’s balance sheet for the same date, those bonds were listed as a long-term liability of $100 million.

What on earth is going on here?

What does it mean that Dill has a reduction in stockholder’s equity for these bonds?

Fraud investigators found that 70 percent of the nearly $160 million in sales booked by an Asian subsidiary of a European company between September 2006 and June 2007 were fictitious. In an effort to earn rich bonuses tied to sales targets, the Asian subsidiary’s managers used highly sophisticated schemes to fool auditors. One especially egregious method involved funneling bank loans through third parties to make it look as though customers had paid, when in fact they hadn’t.

In a lawsuit filed by the company’s auditors, it was alleged that former executives “deliberately” provided “false or incomplete information” to the auditors and conspired to obstruct the firm’s audits. To fool the auditors, the subsidiary used two types of schemes. The first involved factoring unpaid receivables to banks to obtain cash up front. Side letters that were concealed from the auditors gave the banks the right to take the money back if they couldn’t collect from the company’s customers. Hence, the factoring agreements amounted to little more than loans.

The second, more creative, scheme was used after the auditors questioned why the company wasn’t collecting more of its overdue bills from customers. It turns out that the subsidiary told many customers to transfer their contracts to third parties. The third parties then took out bank loans, for which the company provided collateral, and then “paid” the overdue bills to the company using the borrowed money. The result was that the company was paying itself. When the contracts were later canceled, the company paid “penalties” to the customers and the third parties to compensate them “for the inconvenience of dealing with the auditors.”

The investigators also found that the bulk of the company’s sales came from contracts signed at the end of quarters, so managers could meet ambitious quarterly sales targets and receive multimillion-dollar bonuses. For example, 90 percent of the revenue recorded by the subsidiary in the second quarter of 2007 was booked in several deals signed in the final nine days of the quarter. But the company was forced to subsequently cancel 70 percent of those contracts because the customers—most of them tiny startups—didn’t have the means to pay.

List revenue-related fraud symptoms and schemes used in this case. Briefly discuss how actively searching and understanding revenue-related fraud symptoms could have led to discovering the fraud by the company’s auditors.

1. From the table below giving the quantity demanded of a commodity (Y), its price (X10, and consumer income (X2) from 1996 to 2015,

1. Find the least-squares regression equation of Y on X1 and X2 USING EXCEL’S DATA ANALYSIS TOOL.
2. Test at the 5 percent for the statistical significance of the slope parameters,
3. Find the adjusted and the adjusted coefficients of determination, and
4. Test at 5 percent level for the overall statistical significance of the regression.

Show all your results to three decimal places.

13. Given the following data on the Dollar/Pound exchange rate (y) and the U.S. CPI (x), determine the linear regression equation, and include the Summary Output from Excel. • Based on the Summary Output is the coefficient b2 significant using the t-table (one-tail) at the 5% level with n-2 df? Prove your answer using data from the t-table. • Does the relationship given by the regression equation seem to be a reasonable economic model-- is it reasonable to assume that in this model y = f(x)? Explain why or why not. y x Period Exchange rate $ / £ CPI US 1985 1.2974 107.6 1986 1.4677 109.6 1987 1.6398 113.6 1988 1.7813 118.3 1989 1.6382 124 1990 1.7841 130.7 1991 1.7674 136.2 1992 1.7663 140.3 1993 1.5016 144.5 1994 1.5319 148.2 1995 1.5785 152.4 1996 1.5607 156.9 1997 1.6376 160.5 1998 1.6573 163 1999 1.6172 166.6 2000 1.5156 172.2 2001 1.4396 177.1 2002 1.5025 179.9 2003 1.6347 184 2004 1.833 188.9 2005 1.8204 195.3 2006 1.8434 201.6 2007 2.002 207.342

The admissions data for freshmen at a college in the past 10 years are as follows:

1. Plot the number of applications.
2. Develop a trend model to forecast the number of applications for next year. Calculate the R² of that model and the estimated number of applications for the next year.
3. Plot the percentage of acceptances relative to the number of offers made (acceptance yield).
4. Develop a trend model to forecast next year’s acceptance yield. Calculate the R² of that model and the estimated yield for next year.
5. Assume that the college is planning for an entering class of 5,000 freshmen for each of the next two years and a class of 5,300 in the following year. What is the number of offers it should make in each year? Is it getting tougher to get into this college?

use excel AND SHOW EXCEL FORMULAS

Assume that your uncle holds just one stock, East Coast Bank (ECB), which he thinks has very little risk. You agree that the stock is relatively safe, but you want to demonstrate that his risk would be even lower if he were more diversified. You obtain the following returns data for West Coast Bank (WCB). Both banks have had less variability than most other stocks over the past 5 years.

Year                 ECB                  WCB

2004                 40.00%            40.00%

2005 -              10.00%            15.00%

2006                 35.00%            -5.00%

2007                 -5.00%             -10.00%

2008                 15.00%            35.00%

a. What is the expected return and risk of each stock?

b. Measured by the standard deviation of returns, by how much would your uncle's risk have been reduced if he had held a portfolio consisting of 60% in ECB and the remainder in WCB? In other words, what is the difference between portfolio's standard deviation and weighted average of components' standard deviations? (Hint: check the example on page 11-12 on my note).

If this problem can be done using excel, in a way that I can understand the steps I need to take as I go.

Selected information from Rockway, Inc.’s U.S. GAAP financial statements for the year ended December 31, included the following (in $):

Cash provided or used by operating activities (CFO) in the year 2005 was closest to:

Group of answer choices

A. $6,300,000.

B. $5,300,000.

C. $4,300,000.

Although Financial Ratio Analysis has limitations, it is a great tool to find the problematic areas in the company so that managers can go back and address the problems. One of the limitations is differences in accounting standards around the world that can distort financial ratios.

Select two publicly traded US companies listed on the NASDAQ stock market and calculate each company’s P/E (Price to Earnings Ratio) and MB (Market to Book Ratio). What do these ratios tell you about how investors value these two companies’ future prospects?