ACCTFIN 7017 - Financial Statement Analysis (M)

Financial Statement Analysis is essential for all individuals working in the business world. Understanding financial accounting information is critical for a wide range of business decision making. Being able to ask for and understand the appropriate financial information is particularly important for financial analysts and individuals seeking, or already in, management positions at all levels of organizations. Financial statement analysis is exciting and dynamic. It can be orientated in different ways to suit the needs of many individuals including investors, analysts, consultants, creditors, managers, directors, regulators and employees. This offering of Financial Statement Analysis has been specifically designed to meet the needs of individuals who have sufficient background in accounting and finance. The course forges a unique path in financial statement analysis that responds to the needs of modern day business analysts. In particular, it provides a framework for using financial statement data in a variety of business analysis and valuation context. The most important knowledge and skill for managers attempting to understand financial statement information, is a good knowledge of how important business transactions are accounted for, and how these transactions appear in the financial statements. It will be much harder for informed managers to be confused and mislead by 'creative' financial reporting put before them by others. Accordingly, this course focuses on teaching managers and business analysts the skills to be able to understand the complexities of financial statements, and untangle important information that is not visible to the untrained eye. The pedagogy adopted for this course is deliberately designed to closely follow the set text, and the range of applied questions provided in the text. The reason for this approach is very simple: to gain the knowledge and skills necessary to understand financial reporting techniques and pitfalls requires a practice more than anything else. The set tutorials and assignments will engage you in tasks that are designed to provide you with this practice. It is very important that you do each and every one of the set work tasks to the best of your ability to obtain the most from the course.