Discussion:

Imagine you are the CEO of Very Big US Auto. In anticipation of the upcoming quarterly disclosure of profits, you prepare your Board of Directors for the challenge that US Tariffs on Chinese Imports is having on profits.

Very Big US Auto - Very Big US Auto is one of the oldest and one of the largest auto manufacturers of autos in the US. Very Big US Auto's supply chain is highly dependent components manufactured in China and assembled in the US. Like the US economy the Chinese continue to have major stoppage in production due to Covid-19. Additionally manufacturing facilities like ours must take extra precaution to keep workers safe. Costs are rising we are experiencing rising costs. Very Big US Auto know that demand is relatively elastic with a price elasticity of demand of 1.2. We also know that the supply of auto is relatively inelastic and all our competitors are facing the same cost increase.

Is the demand curve for your product relatively elastic, inelastic or unitary elastic? Demonstrate for your company's product, by how much the quantity demanded will change if you pass on a 10% increase in cost. In other words, show your calculation of the percentage change in the quantity demanded given a 10% change in your price. You must provide a calculations showing the percentage change in quantity demanded.

Given your company's and price elasticity of demand and the industry supply/competitive environment you face prepare a statement for your board as to the potential impact on profits. Who will pay the larger share of the cost increases, your firm or your customers?

2). a). You have been recently appointed as a CEO of a distressed Bankand you are to produce a 5-Year Strategic Plan to position the Bank as a market leader. Discuss the process of producing a strategic plan for the Bank for next 5 years as a sustainable Bank Leader.
The following are your KPIs from your Board of Directors:
Return on Equity (ROE) of more than 25%
Market share of Assets & Deposits of more than 12% (Current market leader is 12.1%)
Cost income ratio of 50%
Credit loss ratio of <2%
Outline your vision, shared values, environmental and SWOT Analysis, strategic issues, strategic objectives and clear action plans that will position Bank as sustainable market leader by 2023 .

Daniel Sawyer, the CEO of the Sawyer Group, is initiating planning for the company's operations next year, and he wants you to forecast the firm's additional funds needed (AFN). The firm is operating at full capacity. Data for use in your forecast are shown below. Based on the AFN equation, what is the AFN for the coming year? Dollars are in millions. Last year's sales = S0 $350 Last year's accounts payable $40 Sales growth rate = g 30% Last year's notes payable $50 Last year's total assets = A0* $870 Last year's accruals $30 Last year's profit margin = PM 5% Target payout ratio 60%

Select the correct answer.

a. $233.5

b. $236.1

c. $225.7

d. $228.3

e. $230.9

The CEO of a large electric utility claims that 80 percent of his 1,000,000 customers are very satisfied with the service they receive. To test this claim, the local newspaper surveyed 100 customers, using simple random sampling Among the sampled customers, 74 percent say they are very satisfied.
a)[1 pt] Is this a right-tailed, left-tailed, or 2 -tailed test?
b) [2 pts] Find the value of the test statistic =
b) [2 pts]Find the p-value [round to 3 decimals]
c) I[1 pt]If the level of significance is 5%, what is your decision? Explain
d){1 pt] Do the statistics support the CEO's claim that 80% are satisfied? Explain.

Imagine you are the CEO of a health care organization. You would like to implement a patient-centric health information management system (HIMS) within the organization. This system needs to take into consideration health care costs and safety. You need your executive team on board to ensure the successful implementation of this patient-centric health care technology information system. You plan to present a detailed report to your management team about the patient-centric approach, its benefits and challenges, and why your organization needs to embrace this approach.

Thoroughly answer the following questions:

1. Taking into consideration patient safety and health care costs, explain why a patient-centric approach is important in today’s health care system along with the challenges involved in implementation. Provide specific examples to justify your reasoning.
2. Analyze the benefits derived by health care organizations that practice a patient-centric approach, stating their unique characteristics. Provide at least two examples to support your ideas.
3. Identify two examples of a patient-centric health care practice and propose three ways patient-centric technology could increase patient access to quality health care.
4. Suggest three ways that HIMS can improve the patient experience within a health care organization or with a health care provider.
5. Predict three ways you would use patient-centric health care practice principles to improve quality care measures within your organization.

Provide references

Below is the information provided to you by Ms Lisa James, the CEO of Platinum Manufacturing Group Platinum Manufacturing Group (Platinum) are a medium sized manufacturer of electrical equipment. Their primary customers are small to medium sized businesses around Australia. Their annual turnover in the last 12 months was $3.5 million, growing from $1m only 2 years ago. Due to the growth of the business, Platinum have hired you to review their system for the purchase, receipt, storage, and issuance of raw materials. Ms James has already had some basic discussions with key staff and has provided you with the detail below: Storeroom: The storeroom is run by the Storeroom supervisor and three staff. The storeroom is locked with Storeroom staff requiring a password to access the room. The primary raw materials kept in the storeroom are high cost electrical components, which are often small in size. Raw materials are removed from the storeroom only upon written or oral authorisation by a production supervisor. Ordered materials: Ordered materials are delivered directly to storeroom staff. The staff members count all items received and check that the count agrees with the details on the packing slip received with the goods. The packing slip is then initialled, date stamped and used as a receiving report for the order. The stamped packing slip is scanned and emailed to the purchasing team who file it with the purchase order. The stamped packing slip is placed in a file on a shelf in the storeroom. Purchasing team: The purchasing team clear their emails at the beginning of each day. All stamped packing slips are printed and reviewed with the following possible outcomes:  The packing slip is matched to a valid purchase order found in the Open Purchase Order file – it is filed in the filled purchase orders file pending receipt of a valid tax invoice for payment.  The packing slip does not have a corresponding purchase order - it is filed in an outstanding items file and followed up at the end of the month.

The quantity or items on the packing slip are different to the approved purchase order - it is filed in an outstanding items file and followed up at the end of the month. Purchasing team: The purchasing team also receive the invoice directly from the supplier. All invoices are paid on the due date and filed with the purchase order and packing slip to be reconciled at the end of the month Inventory System: Platinum have not implemented a perpetual inventory system. Storeroom staff are therefore not required to keep records for the goods received or issued. To manage this, inventory is reconciled at the end of each month when the storeroom staff perform a physical inventory count. Ordering of raw materials: The Storeroom supervisor uses the physical count to match quantities on hand against Platinum’s predetermined reorder level. If the count is below the reorder level, the supervisor enters the items inventory number on a materials purchase requisition list that is emailed to the purchasing area. Purchasing raw materials: Upon receipt of a materials requisition form, the purchasing team prepares a purchase order for each item on the list and emails it to the supplier from whom Platinum last purchased the item. A copy of the Purchase order is retained in the Open Purchase Orders file.

A summarised overview of the expenditure process relating to the purchase, receipt, storage and issuance of raw materials. (1 mark) [This should be no longer than one (1) paragraph and need to focus on the key relevant facts. The CEO is already aware of this information, but this overview helps bring your report together for other readers]

Kersten Brown, the CEO of Pleasanton Studios, is having a tough week – all three of her top management level employees have dropped in with problems. One executive is making questionable decisions, another is threatening to quit, and the third is reporting losses (again). Kersten is hoping to find simple answers to all her difficulties. She is asking you (her accountant) for some advice on how to proceed.

Pleasanton Studios owns and operates three decentralized divisions: Entertainment, Streaming, and Parks. Pleasanton Studios has a decentralized organizational structure, where each division is run as an investment center. Division managers meet with the CEO at least once annually to review their performance, where each division manager’s performance is measured by their division’s return on investment (ROI). The division manager then receives a bonus equal to 10% of their base salary for every ROI percentage point above the cost of capital.

The Entertainment division manager, John Freeman, was the first to knock on Kersten’s door this morning. Entertainment, Pleasanton Studios’ first endeavor, produces movies for the big screen. Entertainment has been in operation since 1965. Last month, John had mentioned a proposal to build a new animation studio. The build would cost $4,910,000 with an estimated life of 20 years and no salvage value and would allow Entertainment to start producing animated movies. Animated movies were projected to bring in an additional $1,210,000 in revenues each year, but would increase annual production costs by $574,000. John had dropped in to let Kersten know he had decided not to move forward with the animation studio. This surprised Kersten – her quick mental calculation indicated that the studio would have a payback period of 8 years, much shorter than the expected life of the studio. Not entirely sure that her quick assessment was valid, Kersten needed to check with her accountant on the matter.

Next to Kersten’s door was the manager of Streaming, which produces short-form (30 minute to one hour) episodes in addition to streaming the movies developed by Entertainment. Customers then buy subscriptions to the service. Run by division manager Reyna Imanah, Streaming was introduced in 2016 and has increased subscriptions by 20% every year since. Reyna’s complaint was that, based on the current bonus payout schedule, John Freeman’s bonus last year was significantly higher than hers. She points to the increasing subscription rates at Streaming, and says that her division is being punished for having opened so recently (her division’s facilities are much more recent than those in Entertainment). She currently has an employment offer from another company at the same base pay rate, and stated that she will accept this offer unless she feels her performance is being appropriately acknowledged and compensated. Kersten needs to look at the relative performance across divisions to determine how to proceed with Reyna.

Pleasanton Parks is a theme park based on the movies from Entertainment and the series from Streaming. For many years, it was a popular year-round destination, with characters, rides, and a hotel. This park has lost popularity in recent years, and has been ‘in the red’ for the past two years. If the park is not profitable this year, you will need to decide whether to permanently close that division. Included in the ‘Fixed COGS’ for Parks is an annual $1,650,000 mortgage payment on the land and buildings for the park, which would still need to be paid (as a corporate level cost) if the park is closed and that segment is removed from the financial statements. Incidentally, you recently had a conversation with a Marriott Hotels executive, who would like to expand into the area. If you decided to close Parks, you are fairly certain that you could lease the hotel facilities to Marriott for $650,000 annually.

A partial report of this year’s financial results for Pleasanton Studios can be found in Table 1 below. The ‘Selling and admin costs’ listed in Table 1 are directly incurred by each division, and are determined at the beginning of each year (that is, they do not change with increased/decreased production). In addition to the divisional information above, there are $2,000,000 in corporate costs that are currently allocated evenly between the three divisions. These costs are primarily due to employee benefits costs, which are billed at the corporate level. If the Parks division is closed, the decreased employee base would reduce allocated corporate costs by $500,000. Pleasanton Studios has a cost of capital of 12 percent (and Kersten uses the cost of capital as their required rate of return) and are subject to 32% income taxes.

Before she can make any decisions, Kersten needs to evaluate this year’s performance results. She sets off to see you, the company’s accountant, for answers.

Table 1: Pleasanton Studios current year data

Required:

a. Evaluate this year’s performance results for the three divisions. Your financial analysis should include a segmented income statement for Pleasanton Studios, as well as the current annual ROI, residual income and EVA for the three divisions.

Mr. Andrews is the CEO of Victoria Ltd. He is quite unhappy as he figured that the profits for the last three years were declining despite increasing sales. He approached you to seek advice on the cost accounting numbers and income statement prepared by his accountant. He supplies you the following information:

Actual production for the last three years was as follows.     2017: 65,000 units, 2018: 60,000

units, and 2019: 40,000 units. The opening stock as of 1^st January 2017 was 5,000 units. Fixed manufacturing overheads were allocated to production based on budgeted activity of 60,000 units every year. Actual fixed overheads for each of the three years was $360,000 (per annum).

Required:

1. Prepare a marginal costing income statement which would help you understand the performance of Victoria Ltd.

2. Calculate and advise Mr. Andrews of the breakeven point for Victoria Ltd.

3. Prepare a numerical reconciliation of the profit numbers that you calculated in requirement (a) and the profit numbers calculated by Victoria Ltd’s accountant.

4. In order to help Mr. Andrews better understand the financial affairs of this business, explain the reasons in two brief points about the differences in profit numbers obtained from your marginal costing calculations and the profit numbers calculated by Victoria Ltd’s accountant.

- The CEO of a large electric utility claims that more than 80% of his customers are very satisfied with the service they receive. To test this claim, the local newspaper surveyed 100 customers using simple random sampling. Among the sampled customers, 81% said that they were very satisfied. Do these results provide sufficient evidence to accept or reject the CEO's claimAssume significance level 0.05. State the null and alternative hypothesis, the sample proportion, test statistic. Using StatKey state the p-vale and if we reject the null or not.

PART 1

You are studying the following regression on earnings of a CEO:   

Earnings)= 3.86 - 0.28Female + 0.37MarketValue + 0.004Return

You wonder whether any of the independant variables should be introduced in the model in a nonlinear fashion instead. Right now, they are all present in their original form. Which variables must you test to see if a nonlinear version of them is better suited?

       
A. Earnings, Female, MarketValue, Returns

       
B. Earnings, MarketValue, Returns

       
C. Female, MarketValue, Return

       
D. MarketValue, Returns

PART 2

"A standard ""money demand"" function used by macroeconomists has the form ln(m) = Beta0 + Beta1 ln(GDP) + Beta2 R, Where m is the quantity of (real) money, GDP is the value of (real) gross domestic product, and R is the value of the nominal interest rate measured in percent per year. Supposed that Beta 1 = 1.05 and Beta 2 = -0.03. What is the expected change in m if the interest rate increases from 5% to 9%? Round to nearest integer"

       
A. decrease 12%

       
B. decrease 9%

       
C. increase 12%

       
D. "decrease $7,387"

PART 3

"This problem is inspired by a study of the ""gender gap"" in earnings in top corporate jobs [Bertrand and Hallock (2001)]. The study compares total compensation among top executives in a large set of U.S. public corporations in the 1990s. (Each year these publicly traded corporations must report total compensation levels for their top five executives.) Let Female be an indicator variable that is equal to 1 for females and 0 for males. A regression of the logarithm of earnings onto Female yields ln(Earnings) = 6.55 -0.41Female, SER = 2.44. The Standard Errors for the Constant is (0.01) and for the Female variable is (0.05). The SER tells us all of the following, except:"

       
A. The Standard Error of the regression

       
B. The % of the variance in Earnings we have explained

       
C. The standard deviation of the regression error

       
D. The square root of the variance of the residuals

PART 4

"Assume that you had estimated the following quadratic regression model: Test Score = 607.3 + 3.85Income - 0.0423Income². If income is in thousands, please interpret the coefficient on the Income² term:"

      
A. Cannot interpret that coefficient alone

       
B. A 1 unit increase in income is associated with a 0.0423 points decrease in TestScores

       
C. "A $1,000 increase in income is associated with a 0.0423 points decrease in TestScores"

       
D. "A $1,000 increase in income is associated with a 4.23 % decrease in TestScores"