Assignment Information

1. Question

Financial statement analyses

Once you are allocated to a group of 4 or 5, you are required to:

•    Collaborate with other group members

•    Choose a particular type of external user groups amongst suppliers, customers, employees, government & regulators, and social/environmental activists

•    Access “Financial Analysis Made Easy” (FAME) via UoG Library

•    Undertake trend analyses of key financial ratios of 3 British companies in the energy sector (BP plc, National Grid plc, and Shell plc) for shareholders, lenders and your chosen user group for mostrecent 5 years

•    Provide in a report your analyses of both quantitative and qualitative information from FAME, the companies’ annual reports, and other external sources to help the three user groups with their decision making

2. Further Details

•    The report is expected to include 3 mini-reports (respectively for shareholders, lenders and  your chosen user group) in addition to a brief introduction of the three companies and three user groups and overall evaluation and/or recommendations for the three user groups as well as limitations in the conclusion

•    The main body of the report made up of three mini reports is expected to extensively

employ graphs and diagrams, rather than raw numbersortables, to show the trends of key financial ratios of 3 companies

•    “A” grade will be awarded to reports which make sense of the identified trends by engaging qualitative information from annual reports and external sources

•    This assignment has been designed as a group project in order to demonstrate students’ ability to communicate clearly and appropriately in a group

Additional information for group assignment

Arrangements for forming groups and allocating roles

Groups will be created by our Programme Administrator, based on tutorial groups where possible.

Each member of the group is expected to make an equal contribution to the coursework overall. This might mean that members specialise in different areas, but their contribution should be of equal

value to that of others. Here are the different kinds of contribution that can usually be observed:

Meeting log

You should keep a record of all group meetings and should be attached to the end of the report after your reference list.  This record should show the date of each meeting, the student numbers of those who attended (do not disclose student names), the main items discussed, and the main decisions taken. This record does not need to be very detailed – one to two pages are sufficient. Please note that it is a requirement that this log is included in your submission.

Any serious complaints about group member non-contribution should be lodged with the course coordinator, Dr Paul Ahn, in the first instance.

Summary of key steps to good group work

1.    Get to know the group members

2.    Establish the ground rules

3.    Understand the task

4.    Define your roles

5.    Plan the work

6.    Check your progress

7.   Address the problems

8.    Help everyone pull their weight

9.    Complete on time

10. Evaluate your experience

Groups must discuss the Business School's Assessed Groupwork Policy and agree how they will apply it at their first meeting. The policy can be found on the Student Information Point Moodle.

Note that the School’s Coursework Group Policy is being revised as of August 2022 and may change slightly. We will update you when the policy is finalised.

Moodle forum

Group members must use the group forum provided to interact to ensure that no student is disadvantaged by not having a particular social media account.

3. Assessment Criteria

An overall grade will be awarded on the basis of evidence of: