Description

FINN3300 Corporate Finance

Project Outline and Instructions

What is this project?

This project gives you an opportunity to get some hands-on experience applying corporate finance theory and models to real firms. In the process, you will get a chance to:

(a)               consider the firm’s corporate governance structure including its responsiveness to shareholders, bondholders, markets and society.

(b)                evaluate the risk profile of a firm, and examine the sources of risk.

(c)                analyse how those risks impact its cost of equity and overall cost of capital.

How is the project structured?

This is a group project. Each group must have at least four individuals in it. The group size may not exceed six.

Each group will pick a company to analyse. The company should be publicly traded with debt in its capital structure and have at least one year of trading history and annual financial statements. For ease of analysis, select a company listed in NYSE. It's also helpful for the company to have a detailed website including direct links to items filed with the SEC or other regulators. Avoid the following companies: 1) Financial service firms (banks, insurance companies, investment banks, mutual funds, etc.). 2) Companies with large capital arms (i.e. GE and the auto companies financing through GMAC or Ford Motor credit). 3) Real estate investment trusts.

How is the project format?

The group will write one report for the company selected. The report should be written in a double space, times new roman, size 11.

How will the project be graded?

Each group will receive one grade and every group member will receive the same grade if the work has been done equally by all members. Otherwise, the grade of each group members will be different. Mark Allocation: 20% of your final grade.

Who polices the group?

You do.

Timetable

You should start the project as early as possible. To assist you in this, the following deadlines are imposed:

By Thursday 27 Feb 2020: Turn in a list of your group members

By Thursday 5 Mar 2020: Turn in your company selection.

By Thursday 2 Apr 2020: Turn in the Corporate Governance Analysis portion of the project is due.

Final project report is due one week before the final exam day. (both a hard copies and excel file to be submitted).

Further Details

Two sample projects are attached. The sample projects shown here contain more elements of the live case analysis than those parts assigned for our class. Also, they do not include appropriate citations for sources used or reference lists at the end.

Websites: Consider the following:

finance.yahoo.com; sec.gov; cnn.com/business; cbs.marketwatch.com; hoovers.com; valueline.com; moodys.com; bloomberg.com; altavista.digital.com; nyse.com; www.damodaran.com contains data sources, useful spreadsheets and other information necessary in completing this project.

Check also your company website for the annual reports (3-5 years); Filings made by the company with regulatory agencies. For instance, in the United States, publicly traded companies have to file annual (10-K) and quarterly (10-Q) reports, among a whole array of filings. You can access these reports from the agency websites.