Reasons for a company to want to have some free cash flow available to it at all times?

Why would the government tax system at the federal and states level be set up so that the tax rate on regular income (wages and profits) is higher than the tax rate on interest, dividends, and capital gains?  Who benefits from this?   

What is the concept of book value and how it is calculated.  Why is it different from stockmarket value?  Which is better, higher book or higher market, and why?  

Chapter 7 clarifies the 4 ways in which leaders can enhance the abilities and contributions of followers - offering clarity of direction, providing opportunities for growth, giving honest and constructive feedback, and protecting followers from organizational roadblocks. Research a company who's leader failed to do ONE of the four. How did the leader fail his/her followers? What happened to the organization as a result? Did the leader who failed everyone ever gain the respect back from their followers? If so, how?

The senior management of the company have requested you to provide a report on the
following for a selected client who intend to invest $250,000

LO 1.1 Select one or more companies that you want to invest in London stock exchange.

Link to the London Stock exchange is

http://www.londonstockexchange.com/home/homepage.htm

• Provide justification as to WHY you want to invest in this company or companies

• Who will be the company's stakeholders?

• Why would they be interested in this company?

Bunny Company produces a part that is used in the manufacture of one of its products. The costs associated with the production of 11,000 units of this part are as follows:

Direct materials $25,000

Direct labor 34,000

Variable factory overhead 65,000

Fixed factory overhead 50,000

$174,000

Of the fixed factory overhead costs, $9,000 is avoidable.

Required:

a. Assuming there is no alternative use for the facilities, should Bunny Company take advantage of an offer from a supplier who is willing to sell Bunny Company 11,000 units of the same part for $12.50 per unit?

b. Would your answer to Part A change if the facilities could be rented for $10,000 a year?

This assignment challenges students to formulate a professional response to in-depth issues contained in a real-life Video Business Case. Students will act as an independent professional business consultant reporting to senior managers of the company concerned. Students are expected to provide informed and robust advice to this business client. The video below is provided by Ernst and Young company. It refers to the issues faced by an organisation in the Maritime Safety Industry. Ernst and Young is required to solve these issues.

As students, we are appointed as consultants. Firstly, we should identify the issue clearly and the cause. Secondly,we need to propose alternatives. Thirdly, we should do a decision criteria. We should then recommend the solutions accordingly. And do an ethical issue recognition.

Here is the case.

ISSUE

So, the issue we had to resolve involved a private sector organization who operate in the maritime safety industry. They are a well-established private company and provide global services to a number of different organizations. The issue arose due to a point of inflection that they arrived at as an organization.

Historically over the last 30 to 40 years they'd established a range of services which were well known and well trusted and well regarded by the organization's they interacted with. As a company they were very satisfied with their financial performance they had a very strong reputation and brand in the market.

What they had realized a number of years ago, was that they couldn't remain static a company and they needed to change the way they deliver that particular service to their clients so the rate of change outside of their industry insular competitors was accelerating far beyond their own internal rate of change.

So, at the risk of standing still they realized they had to transform their organization so they undertook this and began this transformation about three years prior to I guess us getting involved and the issue arose that they had probably three different points of inflection where they effectively had to stop that transformation which was occurring and restarted and this was causing a number of concerns to the board and to the company itself.

So there was financial concerns there was regulatory concerns, there was reputational risk at stake and also there was the sustainability of the services as it impacted Maritime Safety. So through this process they realized that the structure they had in place at that time was not going to allow them to successfully deliver this transformation so they engaged us at that point in time to do a health check and review of what had occurred today and give an independent perspective on whether that transformation was actually going to be successful and provide a set of recommendations around what changes they should make and what options they should consider regarding affecting or impacting that transformation within the organization

ISSUE BACKGROUND

So the company size was probably what we describe as a small to medium sized organization so maybe 40 to 50 employees strong. Their board was and is consisted of a number of large enterprise type organizations and the reason they engaged us as a firm was to come in and provide that intermediary layer between the organization itself who were delivering the transformation pretty much in-house and themselves as independent board members to gave them a view of the success likely success on of that transformation occurring.

So a bit more background and context around the transformation was it had a number of different elements to it one was organizational two was cultural and three was technical or technology-based so the company itself as I said earlier was primarily in maritime safety but in essence they were also delivering a technology service to their clients

CAUSE

the issue was primarily caused by the organization itself not having an independent perspective on the likely success are indeed the path to success to effect a transformation. it also had little independent oversight over how it could have actually transformed or changed that transformation through these various inflection points that it went through. there was also a degree of organizational capability which was missing and identified but hadn't been independently verified through the previous two to three-year pass. so the company itself continued to provide the services in parallel with changing and transform himself internally. so one of the significant issues that we identified was that there was no burning platform or desire to change because it was operating quite successfully in his traditional way. the same people that were providing that traditional Swedish services were also trying to effect a transformation. so there was no actual completion date or reason to ever successfully complete a transformation because the company was actually operating very successfully true delivering its ongoing suite of service causes that we identified through I guess that initial review we did of the company was that the approach to addressing the issues that encountered historically was to bring in in-house some additional capability in the same areas so they continued to feel like exasperate some of the issues through bringing in similar capability and similar services and functions without ever separating and bringing in a new perspective our new approach so the issues if you like were continuous they weren't evolving they weren't being addressed or identified and no root cause analysis are indeed kind of path forward was being identified by the organization through that that analysis so the board were quite concerned that he couldn't see the end to this transformation or project they were continuing to be successful but they were recognizing that they were being outpaced potentially by some of their competitors and they also identify that there was a lack of innovation of strategy that was being put in place by the company and the reputational risk and commercial risk was increasing on a monthly basis and hence they involved us as an organization to come in and do that independent review and then identify what some of those different options to proceed were for them moving forward.

1. Dr. Woz and Dr. Yaz want to test whether violent video games have an effect on aggressive thinking. In order to test aggressive thinking, Woz and Yaz are going to use a test developed at GTA University; scores greater than 70 on the test indicate agreement with statements that endorse aggressive behavior. They select a sample of n = 100 teenagers from a local high school for the study. Each of the students spends an hour playing a first-person shooter video game and then takes the test. The mean and standard deviation for the sample is M = 73 and s = 20. Woz and Yaz would like to know if the sample mean of 73 is statistically significantly different from 70 using a two-tailed test with ? < .05 and critical values of t of ±1.98.

a. What is the null hypothesis for this test? H₀ =

b. What is the estimated standard error for this test?

c. Calculate the value of t (round to two decimal places, if rounding is necessary).

d. Do you accept or reject the null hypothesis?

2. A paired samples t-test produces the following results: t(99) = 2.15, p < .05. The study included 1 blank participants and the decision was to 2 blank the null hypothesis. (Note: Your first answer will be a number and your second will be a word.)

3. The estimated standard error:

Apple Inc.

Introduction. Start with an introductory paragraph or two explaining the purpose of the report.

Brief History of the Company. In no more than one (1) page address the following:
•   What is the company’s principal line of business and major competitors?
•   What are their key products/services?
•   On what day does the company’s fiscal year end?
•   Provide a brief history of the company: When did the company first go public? Have they had any stock splits since then? Any other relevant data about their stock.
•   Who is their current CEO, CFO?
•   What else would a potential investor want to know?

Body: address the following questions related to your selected company in paragraph (not list) form.
1.   Who is the company’s current auditor? What does the auditor do?
2.   What method of depreciation is used by the company to depreciate its operational assets?
3.   What inventory method is used to state the value of the company’s inventory?
4.   Does the company have treasury stock (or a repurchase program)? Explain.
5.   Does the company have any investments? If so, what categories?
6.   What is the largest source of cash from financing activities?
7.   What is the largest use of cash from investing activities?
8.   Describe one footnote that presents additional detail about a reported financial statement number (provide the footnote number or letter).
9.   Describe one footnote that reports financial statement information not listed as a number in the financial statements (provide the footnote number or letter).
10.   What was the overall trend of the stock price for the most recent year?

Each part should be no more than 1 page in length.

Part I

The rules of accounting provide management with “some” latitude in determining when revenue is earned. Assume that a company normally required acceptance by its customers prior to recording revenue as earned, delivers a product to a customer near the end of the quarter. The company believes that customer acceptance is assured, but cannot obtain it prior to the quarter-end. Recording the revenue would assure “making its numbers” for the quarter. Although formal acceptance is not obtained, the salesperson records the sale, fully intending to obtain written acceptance as soon as possible.

1. What are the revenue recognition requirements in this case?

2. What are the ethical issues relating to this sale?

3. Assume you are on the board of directors of this company. What safeguards can you put in place to provide assurance that the company’s revenue recognition policy is followed?

Part II

Research and review what a financial statement derivative is. Identify an example and how company’s use to leverage the business activities.

Part III

A company’s return on net operating assets (RNOA = NOPAT/Average NOA) is commonly used to evaluate financial performance. If managers cannot increase NOPAT, they can still increase this return by reducing the amount of net operating assets (NOA). In bullet form, list specific ways that managers could reduce the following assets:

1. Receivables

2. Inventories

3. Plant, property equipment

Rowland Company is a small editorial services company owned and operated by Fran Briggs. On August 31, 2018, the end of the current year, Rowland Company's accounting clerk prepared the following unadjusted trial balance: