Finance
Paper, Order, or Assignment Requirements
FIN 345 / Financial Markets and Institutions Assignment 3 You have been hired by a small investment management firm, which is considering a perspective of adding a financial institution into their investment portfolio. Before initiating a full-fledged analysis, the CIO of the company has asked you to prepare a short initial report on a specific Financial Institution that explains its business environment, operations and recent performance. You can choose among commercial banks, mutual and pension funds, insurance companies, investment banks, securities companies, or venture capital firms. Any other financial institution should be approved by the CIO (Instructor). The main text, not including an executive summary, introduction, conclusion, references and appendices should not exceed 3000 words. The report should consist of three sections: – Business environment section should discuss the industry in which the firm is operating, describe its customers, partners/suppliers, competitors and products, analyse its legal and regulatory environment. – Operations section should describe how it functions, analyse its sources and uses of funds (assets/liabilities), how it makes its profits (revenues/expenses), and describe its risks and risk management process. – Performance section should use profitability (profit margin, return on assets and return on equity) and investment ratios (earnings per share, dividends per share and P/E ratio) to discuss trends in its recent performance and compare it to the industry. Finally given that your CIO is extremely busy and travels very often, you are asked to present him your findings in a 3 minute video presentation and send it to him along with your report. The report and presentation should be uploaded through the corporate website (MyCourses) before the midnight on Friday, 5 March, 2015. Your assignment will be graded using the following criteria: Criteria Points Understanding&application of the concepts learned in the course The report should demonstrate that the author fully understands and has applied concepts learned in the course. Concepts are integrated into the authors’s own insights. The writer provides concluding remarks that show analysis and synthesis of ideas. 20 Conformity to the required content and focus The report contains all of the required content and is focused narrowly enough for the scope of this assignment. 20 Depth of discussion/analysis There is an in-depth discussion & elaboration in all sections of the paper. 20 Clearness of discussion/analysis The author writes in a clear language and ties together information from all sources 20 Citations/Spelling&Grammar/Format/Word count The report cites all data obtained from other sources. APA citation style is used in both text and references. No spelling &/or grammar mistakes. Report is professionally formatted and confirms to the word count limits. 10 Quality of the video presentation The presentation fully reflects the main points of the report. It’s done in a professional manner.
