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Was relatively ok felt less pressured than mock attempts just struggled to see what overall issues Achilles had other than less profitability which seemed to be due to not increasing prices while costs had increased.
1) Operational comments I think I did ok but didn’t use any models.
Comment on financial results and position was hard and struggled to write anything meaningful.Used SAF to evaluate the different proposals but was quite tedious doing SAF 4 times over and not sure that’s what the marker wants to see.
Also found the risk manager role & responsibilities quite tough to score marks on.
Performance excellence on the slides I had to use alot of common sense.
Generally found it hard to link to the exhibits when answering questions.
It wasn’t difficult or tricky but I run out of time and left last question incomplete. If I pass it will be by just luck. 🙁 Never mind, we’ll see in few weeks.
First question struggled with operations – clearly though they are spending more on marketing to maintain their current customer base – sales increased but prices didn’t increase. Lots of good tangible assets to make acquisitions, interest cover increased, current stayed the same etc
The second question on the spillages risks – reputation, environment, regulation, legal etc that was straightforward.
Sceptism on the acquisition wasn’t too bad
Big data wasn’t bad to finish either.
The acquisition I
Kept saying request management accounts as they gave little infoFor sources of funds, equity, loans ICO and p2p
Put maybe avoid buying shares as P/E ratio seemed to be overvalued though needed to compare against others
Totally agree to the comment above.
The questions overall were not difficult. However, I overrun with time with Q1 and then hastily answered the rest of the questions. I guess, I would have written more relevant points if I hadn’t lagged behind with Q1.
Q3 was a bit confusing, and I couldn’t iThe case was about premium customers cruise ship company:
Q1. (a) Evaluate financial and operational perfromance based on PL and BS
(b) Change in corporate governance arrangements
Q2. Assess strategic choices
Q3. Risk manager for food quality in the ship, risk awareness
Q4. Baldrige model of operational excellence – to prepare 2 slides on why operational excellence is important and how to achieve it.Seemed to be a fair paper overall.
Did anyone use the Balanced Scorecard model to assess the operational and financial performance in the first question? I didn’t use Baldwin’s Performance Excellence due to q4 being solely focused on this
Mine had big data
And a oil slick
Did the operation part of question 1 rely on reviewing the accounts only
It seems that there have been different paper variants. For those who have Q3 to evaluate sceptically the possible acquisition of river cruise company, one question. Do yo find any info about acquisition price? I think that such info was not included in the exhibit.
If such acquisition price is missing, this is good point to be sceptical.
P/E is worth if compared to industry, but such info was missing.
Also the financial data was just for the previous year. Nothing for the current one.The PE was key on purchase price mate
You needed the pe of competitors to know if the P/E ratio was comparable of the industry or the company was overvalued
I spent way too much time on question one, I think my attempt at task 2 was good and for task 3 I think we had to value Rabinus Rivers using P/E ratio,FCF diVidends and comment on how suitable it is for acquisition and then suggest the methods of financing the acquisition, I didn’t get to question 4 as I ran out of time ???I feel I could have passed if I did!!!
That’s not what I thought about the riverboat company
I thought we had information from the company on figures, but we had to interrogate them using sceptism
One years figures isn’t enough
Average sales price what’s the average made up of ?
Profit margin but what’s this done trending wise
Net assets figures hides any debts of riverboat firm
Achilles has well paid motivated staff nothing on staff of riverboat – culture clash
Nothing on lack of experience of purchasing firms
Pe suggests firm is overvalued
Overpaying dividends – high shareholder expectations
That’s all I got for it
You didn’t have enough information to do calculations in my opinion
I think it just wanted options imho
Guys i also got same cast study of Achilles Cruises listed company of Norland, despite i practice many mocks but still i find this paper tough enough to pass, by way i complete my whole paper on time but can’t say anything what i wrote in my paper. Fingers crossed.
Task 1
req(a) Financial Analysis of Performance of operations
Req (b)Arrangement of Governance structure and improvement if needed.
professional marks on evaluation skills and analysis skills.Task 2:
Req(A) Risk occurs due to spoilage of oil
Req(b) Analysis on Stakeholders and recommend Startegies which company will take.
Professional Marks on Analysis and evaluationTask 3
Req(A) Analysis on acquisition of Robin Cruise ship Company.
Req(b) Factors to consider for funding strategies.
professional marks on professional SkepticismTask 4
Two Presentation slides on Big data analysis on the improvement to Current Business Operation and further funding importance.
Professional marks on commercial acumenI had the question on Achilles. Overall it was an okay paper.
On the operations question I discussed the issue of their potentially being boundaries within the organisation as they had different operational units and could be following their own goals. Another issue was that budgets were set by head office and would have resulted in lack of staff buy in. For the strengths of their operations I mentioned E business capability (online booking system, communications technology etc), Marketing ability (segmenting and targeting customers). Performance and position were covered by mentioning at least 3 ratios.The governance question was relatively easy. They were required to have an internal audit function as they are a listed company but were missing one. Insufficient number of NEDs was another issue. For the strengths I mentioned that they had already sub committees in place and they were operating a unitary structure.
I found the risk and performance excellence questions very difficult to link to the case. I ended up mainly regurgitating book knowledge and applying this in bits. The question on embedding risks was particularly difficult.
Hi mate I don’t know if my governance question mentioned strengths it just said suggest improvements
NEDS
Diversity of the board
Board members been there 8 yearsI missed internal audit.
Made a few points how two tier board may improve governance
We might have had different questions. Mine was to evaluate the governance arrangements and then make recommendations for improvement. I mentioned a few strengths and weaknesses and then made suggestions.
I was going to suggest a two tier board structure but I didn’t want to contradict myself as I mentioned a unitary board as a strength. What points did you make about diversity? I couldn’t find anything in the extract.
I think the extracts were very limited on the information, I have mentioned diversity due to all directors previously worked in the same industry. Mentioned different backgrounds for the potential new board members.
Didn’t it say all directors were all associated with the ship industry no one had any outside experience
I don’t remember my case mentioning that. Either that or I completely missed it!
I think there was a line after CEO details , mentioning they all from Ship industry
Overall I found the paper to be fair, but I had to rush in answering the question on assessing the proposal on the Riverboat company with only 12 minutes left to answer the 24mark question. I hope what I jotted down was enough to earn a few marks which could add up to a passing grade.
I forgot to click end button after I finished with exam. Is it ok if I didn’t click the end button?
Was there a model for evaluating operational performance ? I just took stuff from exhibit and elaborated on it with no structure.
For the governance question I wrote about appointing a risk committee, increasing NEDs, increase diversity and include people with financial background.
Roles and responsibilities of a food hygiene manager was mostly text book for me but we had a large exhibit on food poisoning just couldn’t find anything relevant to the question which really worried me.
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