FIN4550 – APPLIED CORPORATE FINANCE – COURSEWORK GUIDANCE Module leader: Dr Nitin Deshmukh The coursework is a group report and accounts for 70% of your final grade for this module. This coursework provides students with the opportunity to put into practice the major topics we cover. Essentially, what you are expected to do is an in-depth financial analysis of real live companies using Bloomberg. You will work in a group of THREE students. Each group must analyse companies in the same industry. Once the industry has been selected, each group will select one company from each of the following three indices AND the selected industry. In other words, you will be analysing three different companies from your selected industry, ONE each from the following list of indices. 1. FTSE 100 Index 2. FTSE 250 Index 3. FTSE SmallCap Index All selected companies should have at least 3 years of trading history and 3 years of annual financial statements. No two groups can have the same industry. The entire group will write one report. In this report, all the three companies will be compared and contrasted and the results will be presented as a whole i.e. the report will synthesise information and analysis for all firms. You are required to address the following issues in your group report. 1. Evaluate the Risk Profile for each company and examine the sources of risk. Investigate how systematic risk factors are taken into account in the company. Compare and critically analyse your findings across companies and make recommendations. (20% of the final grade) 2. Analyse the Capital Structure for each company. Estimate the Cost of Debt and Cost of Equity for each company. Calculate the Weighted Average Cost of Capital for each company. Compare and critically analyse your findings across companies and make recommendations. (30% of the final grade) 3. Payout Policy. Report on what the payout policy has been for each company over the past 3 years. Critically analyse the payout policy adopted by each company and make recommendations. Compare and critically analyse your findings across companies. Please support your analysis with relevant theories. (20% of the final grade) Further detailed instructions for the above three parts of the report will be provided during the lectures and seminars. FIN4550 CW Guidance Page 1 of 2 Please Note: 1. The report should not exceed 5000 words. 2. Please use tables to summarise data and findings where you can. In your group report, since the analysis is paralleled across the companies, you might find it useful if you start each section with a table that summarizes your findings for that section across the companies in your group. 3. You should have all the companies discussed in an integrated report, by section. 4. At the end of the report please include references to the data sources that you have used for your report (such as the London Stock Exchange website, Bloomberg, Annual Reports, Yahoo Finance, etc.). 5. As part of your literature review, you are expected to use academic articles that are available from our electronic resources (at Middlesex University). Sources of information: Company annual reports (Available on the company website) London Stock Exchange www.londonstockexchange.com (you can get list of companies by Industry and Index from this website) Yahoo Finance http://uk.finance.yahoo.com (you can get historical data on stock prices from this website) Databases: Bloomberg, EBSCO Submission A link will be provided to submit your report online on My Learning. Submission Deadline: Sunday 22nd April 2018, 5PM FIN4550 CW Guidance Page 2 of 2 .