MIDDLESEX UNIVERSITY

BUSINESS SCHOOL
ACC2211 MANAGERIAL FINANCE AND ACCOUNTING

ACC2211 Group Coursework (Weight to overall mark 20%)

DEADLINE:
DEADLINE: THURSDAY 7th APRIL 2011 at 4 PMPM
WORD LIMIT: 2 500 WORDS WITH +/- +/- 10%
GROUP MEMBERS: ONLY
ONLY 5 per GROUP (groups of any other formation will
be unaccepted and thus awarded a ZERO mark)

You are required to submit a HARD COPY ONLY.

ONLY. ALSO
ALSO KEEP THE RECEIPT IN
SAFE PLACE. NO LATE SUBMISSIONS ARE ACCEPTED.

Attention for Students relating to Plagiarism

All work submitted must be written in your own words, where you have used
quoted material, you MUST give full reference to it, you must cite all
references used at the
the end of your assignment (refer to the information cited
on page 3 of this document concerning Harvard Referencing System)
System).

Case Study: Carrefour Group

Joanna Black has just finished her studies at Middlesex University, UK this year. Although
the financial crisis is still ongoing, Joanna has managed to secure her internship position
with Carrefour Group in France. After Joanna has worked there for six months, she is very
interested in purchasing some of this company’s shares.
Your assignment task is to generate one financial report to provide the following
information required by Joanna:
Financial Report Outline
I.. Background to the Company (on average 700
700 words):
Please write a good concise introduction of Carrefour’s history, vision, mission, products,
customers and the market competition of the industry Carrefour is competing in.
II. Company Strengths
Strengths and Weaknesses (on average 1300
1300 words):
words):
To adequately cover this part, you are required to give information to address the
following:
• What is meant by the term Financial Statements? And how do organizations make
use of financial statements to measure their performance? (You are advised to refer
to different references to address this question). Many texts are available in the
library. A useful link is given below:

http://library.mdx.ac.uk/ipac20/ipac.jsp?session=B265370915T0I.516&menu=se
arch&aspect=basic_search&npp=15&ipp=20&spp=20&profile=bg&ri=&index=.T
W&term=financial+reporting&aspect=basic_search#focus

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 • For the FIVE years period 2005 2005-2009,
2009 Calculate and comment on ALL the
RELEVANT Financial Ratios (from
from 2005
2005 January to 2009 December; 5 years)
years for
Carrefour Group to help Joanna make a decision. You can access the company’s
annual reports for these FIVE years via the web link:

http://www.carrefour.com/cdc/finance/publications-and-presentations/annual-reports/

III. Summary, Conclusions, and Recommendations (on average 500

500 words):
In this section, you should critically address the following question:
Are you willing to recommend Joanna to purchase Carrefour’s shares?

Format of report

Detailed calculations should be provided into the main body of the report. The report
should be structured as follows:
• a title page
• a contents page showing all numbered sections or subsections and their page
numbers
• an appropriate Introduction
• sections which have a heading and a number
• section headings (and if appropriate sub-
sub-sections)
sections) should describe their contents
• sections should be in a logical order
• page numbers
• Appendices (numbered or lettered) containing the detailed calculations
• an appropriate Recommendation

Each member of the group should do a fair share of the work. The report report is a joint
responsibility,
responsibility and each member is responsible for numerical accuracy, presentation, and
standard of writing: marks awarded for the report will be the same for all members. If there
are problems within the group which you cannot resolve, please discuss with your lecturer.
If the problems are not resolved and it is felt there has been an unequal contribution, then,
exceptionally, you should inform your lecturer of the proportion of the work which has
been contributed by each member.

Academic integrity

You should use your own words,

words not quote phrases from textbooks. Do not quote from
lecture handouts.
handouts It is expected that you will use textbooks to obtain an understanding of
the issues involved. If you use textbooks as the source of ideas for your report, you must
provide
provide a reference.
reference Not to do so would be plagiarism – a breach of regulations with serious
penalties. Please provide the page number in your in-text reference if you have referred to
a textbook.

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 HARVARD REFERENCING SYSTEM

All assignments you submit should be properly referenced. You will lose marks if you do
not reference your work properly and you may even be accused of plagiarism.

While there are a number of different conventions regarding referencing, it has been
decided that we should adopt the 'Harvard' system (otherwise known as the 'author-date'
system. The following paragraphs and accompanying tables are intended to give you the
essential information you need to employ the convention.

Remember that:
• References are required in the body of the text, not just at the end.
• Referencing should be consistent and complete.

Referencing
Referencing in the body of the text:

Whether the written work is an essay, report or dissertation you will be expected to include
references to published work as you go along. As Cottrell (1999:123) says:

'You must give the reference whenever you draw on a source of information:
• As your inspiration (in general)
• As the source of a particular theory article or viewpoint
• For specific information such as statistics, examples or case studies
• For direct quotations (reproducing the writer's exact words)
• For texts which you paraphrase rather than quote.'

The general form of each reference in the body of the text is:
First
Author's Name
Then
Date of publication
Then
Page number(s)
(These are only given where specific pages are being referred to)

You are referred to Cottrell (1999: 123-5) for detailed advice on how to incorporate
references and for different ways of introducing them.

The following table is designed to help you with most situations you will encounter. It is
important to employ these rules consistently, even if this may seem pedantic.

Table 1: Using the Harvard System to Reference in the Text

To refer to: For example

A work by a single author (Cottrell, 1999:125)
where 1999 is the date and 125 the page
number.
A work by two authors (Cohen and Marshall, 1997)

A work by more than two authors (Gabriel et al., 2000)

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 More than one publication by the same (Seegram, 1995, 1998)
author in ascending date order
More than one publication by different (Ahmed, 1995, Smith, 1997)
authors in alphabetical order
More than one publication by different (James, A., 1990, James P., 1999)
authors with the same surname
An author referred to by another author (Mwansa cited by Samuels, 1994:678)
(secondary reference)

A publication where no author is given but (Hanson Trust plc, 1998)

an organisation's name is

Newspaper or journal article with no (The Times, 1999)

author given

An internet site (BBC Online, 1999)

References
References at the end of the assignment:

You should always provide a comprehensive list of references at the end of your
assignments. This should list all the items referred to in the body of the text and give full
publishing details so that anyone can follow up any particular reference and be certain that
it is the correct one. References should be organised in alphabetical order. You should not
include works which may have been referred to in the course of your preparation for the
assignment but which have not been referred to in the body of the text. If you feel it is
important to alert the reader to such items a separate list headed 'bibliography' should be
provided but usually this is unnecessary.

The following list illustrates most of the kinds of references you are likely to need, Saunders
et al (2000:454-456) has a more comprehensive list.

References to books:
Lynch, R (1997) Corporate Strategy London, Pitman

Note that it is essential that it takes the above form, giving: name(s) and initials, date, place
of publication (London in the above example) and publisher (e.g. Pitman). The title should
be distinguished from other text - usually italics are used. Edition numbers should be given
for second and subsequent edition but not for first editions.

References to chapters in edited books where the chapters are by different authors.

Flam, H (1993) 'Fear, Loyalty and Greedy Organizations' in Fineman, S (1993) Emotion in
Organizations, London, Sage, pp58-75
Note the title of the chapter is in inverted commas, the title of the book in which it appears
in italics.

Journal Articles

Rafaeli, A. (1989) 'When cashiers meet customers', Academy of Management Journal,

32:245-73
Note that the title of the article appears in inverted commas and the title of the journal in
italics (as in book titles). The numbers at the end are the issue number of the journal in

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which it appears, followed by the page numbers. Sometimes journals give volume number
and issue number (or Month or season) within the volume, in which case give the
reference accordingly - e.g. 12,3:323-344 for volume 12 number 3 pages 323-344.

Newspaper articles (with no author given)

Guardian (2000) 'Fraud in the office' The Guardian 6th April, page 5.

Internet site

Prospects Web (2000) 'Career planning' (online) (cited 7th July 2000). Available from
URL:http://www.propects.csu.ac.uk/student/cidd/

Since, as in all referencing the aim is to allow the reader to access the materials you are
referring to, it is important to give the correct URL so they can find what you are referring
to. (One disadvantage of web references is that there is no guarantee of permanence -
unlike a book or article - this is one reason for giving the date you used the site).

References/Further Reading:
Cottrell, S. (1999) The Study Skills Handbook (UEL edition) Basingstoke, Macmillan.

Saunder, M., Lewis, P., Thornhill, A. (2000) Research Methods for Business Students
(second edition) Harlow, Pearson Education Ltd.