During the session, you will be set weekly tutorial assignments. Four of your weekly tutorial assignments will be collected for the purpose of assessing your ongoing effort in the unit. Advance notice will NOT be given that a particular tutorial assignment is to be collected. You should note that it is only possible for you to submit your tutorial assignment in the tutorial in which you are enrolled and to which the tutorial assignment relates. For each of these four tutorial assignments, 2.5 marks will be awarded for a satisfactory attempt. Where the student has made a moderate attempt of the tutorial questions, 1 mark will be awarded. Zero marks will be awarded for a non-satisfactory attempt or a non-submission. The tutorial assignments will be marked for effort, rather than correctness.

Students who do not obtain satisfactory grades for a weekly assignment may compensate via submission of a three to four page summary of the textbook chapter(s) and other relevant material, related to the topic. The summaries, like the tutorial assignments, will be marked for effort. Summaries may be submitted at any time during the session, prior to the start of Week 13. A student will not obtain credit for submitting more than one summary of the same topic. Receipt of four satisfactory grades for tutorial assignments and / or summaries will result in a student receiving full marks for this assessment item.

Extensions Not applicable.

Nature and Content of the Tests In-class tests will be distributed in tutorial classes in Week 4 and 11 for the purpose of providing you with feedback on your progress in the unit. Each test is worth five percent of the total assessment.

The test in Week 4 will be of 45 minutes' duration. The test will be revisionary, covering the four aforementioned topics from 200-level finance units. Past experience has shown that students tend to neglect revising 200-level finance. They tend to forget that this action should be an integral part of their study program, even though the material is assumed knowledge and hence not the focus of lectures and tutorials.

The second test will be of one-hour's duration. The test will be quantitative, requiring students to forecast financial statements for a hypothetical company, using data and assumptions provided.  The purpose of the test is to help students become familiar with basic principles and approaches for forecasting. Prior experience suggest that students do forecasts and valuations poorly.

Questions in both tests are closed book, and answered under examination conditions. You will receive feedback from your tutor in the following weeks. Further details about the tests will be announced in due course on the unit iLearn website.

Extensions You must sit for the tests in your assigned tutorial, unless prevented from doing so due to illness or misadventure. Students in this situation must apply for Special Consideration. If your application for Special Consideration is approved, you will be required to sit a supplementary in-class test.

The major assignment is a sell-side report for a listed Australian company. The assignment is to be completed in syndicate groups of three or four students. The students take the viewpoint of sell-side analysts. The markers of the major assignment take the viewpoint of shareholders educated in accounting and finance but not necessarily intimately familiar with the company subject to analysis. Detailed information will be released on iLearn. There are two components to this assessment task: the presentations and the report.

Presentations During the tutorials in Weeks 8 and 9, students will deliver presentations of work-in-progress on their major assignments. The presentations are worth 5% of the total assignment. The presentations will be on the strategic and business analysis, accounting analysis and financial analysis. There are two principal purposes of the presentation. The first purpose is to enable students to obtain feedback, on their work to date, from the tutor and their fellow students. The second purpose is to discipline the students to work of the major assignment. Each presentation should last for 12 – 15 minutes. All members of the group are required to contribute. After each presentation, there will be a short group discussion, to provide the presenters with feedback. It would be a practical impossibility to adequately cover all aspects of the aforementioned topics during the time allocated. Hence, each group should select up to four issues for which they would most like feedback. Their presentation should focus on these issues. Students are welcome to use visual aids.

Four presentations will be scheduled during each tutorial. Inevitably, it will not be possible for all students to do their presentations in the tutorials. Hence, special out-of-tutorial sessions will be arranged for the additional presentations. Students unable to deliver their presentations during the tutorial must make themselves available to attend one of the out-of-tutorial sessions. The presentations will be marked out of 20. The marking criteria for the presentations are as follows: explanation of the issues for which the group would like feedback (10 marks), presentation and communication skills (4 marks), structure (4 marks) and timing (2 marks). Marking templates will be provided on iLearn.

Extensions Not applicable. No extensions will be granted.

Reports

Each group is required to submit a report of their sell-side analysis. The report for the major assignment is worth 15% of the total assessment.  The final mark will be an equally-weighted average of individual and group marks.  The reports are to be submitted, via Turnitin, using the link from the unit's website. The report should canvass all stages of sell-side analysis covered during the semester: strategic and business analysis, accounting analysis, financial analysis, forecasts, valuations and recommendation. The report is to be approximately 20 – 25 double-lined spacing pages in length, excluding references and appendices. Further details will be provided on iLearn.

The reports will be printed and marked out of 100.  Hard copies will be returned to students.  A written report will be provided for each group, providing detailed feedback on their performance for every section of the sell-side report.

Extensions Extensions will not be granted, without prior consultation with the Unit Convener.  

Penalties

Reports exceeding 25 pages will be penalised.

There will be a deduction of 10% of the total available marks made from the total awarded mark for each 24 hour period or part thereof that the submission is late (for example, 25 hours late in submission – 20% penalty). This penalty does not apply for cases in which an application for special consideration has been made and approved.

You are expected to present yourself for examination at the time and place designated in the University Examination Timetable. The timetable will be available in Draft form approximately eight weeks before the commencement of the examinations and in Final form approximately four weeks before the commencement of the examinations.

The Macquarie University examination policy details the principles and conduct of examinations at the University. The policy is available at: https://staff.mq.edu.au/work/strategy-planning-and-governance/university-policies-and-procedures/policies/final-examination The only exception to not sitting an examination at the designated time is because of documented illness or unavoidable disruption. In these circumstances you may wish to consider applying for Special Consideration. The University’s policy on Special Consideration is available at https://students.mq.edu.au/study/my-study-program/special-consideration.  If a Supplementary Examination is granted as a result of the Special Consideration process, the examination will be scheduled as per the Supplementary Examination timetable of the Faculty.

Please note that the supplementary examination will be of the similar format as the final examination.

Examination conditions • Closed book • Non-programmable calculators with no text-retrieval capacity are permitted.

• No electronic devices, such as smartphones are permitted. • No dictionaries are permitted. • The duration of the examination will be two-and-a-half hours plus 10 minutes reading time.