Topic 4/5 – Further Guidance

Hello All!

I’m currently working with an OBU mentor with the view of hopefully submitting my RAP before the Nov deadline. They have been extremely helpful and have made their self available whenever I’ve needed them, but the one thing I’m still struggling with is selecting an appropriate company.

The issue I’m having is with the ‘exceptional’ part of the requirement. I’ve looked at around 12 companies so far, based in either the UK or US using Companies House or SEC respectively (for ease of access + published in English – my native language), and I’m struggling to find an example where there is clear over or under performance across each of the last three financial years. For example, every company I’ve looked at has had good performance in two of the three financial years (e.g. 2021 and 2023, 2021 and 2022), but has had one year of ‘decline’.

I’m not sure if I’m attaching too much importance here, but I worry the RAP marker may struggle with my justification if there is one financial year which isn’t entirely consistent with my core argument. It feels like I’m almost trying to shoehorn a middling company into the RAP.

I was wondering if anyone else has had any similar issues and how they overcame them, or even if I’m just not interpreting the requirement correctly?