ACCT 40915 Corporate Governance 

SUMMATIVE ASSIGNMENT – ACCT 40915 Corporate Governance 

The summative assessment allows students to:

1. Analyse how a listed company’s board of directors fulfils their governance role and responsibilities in directing and controlling the operations of the business.

1. Evaluate whether a company’s board of directors performs their governance role effectively, when compared to best practice.

Scenario

You are a corporate governance consultant who has been hired by a UK institutional investor (your client), who is now looking to invest in the near future.

In order to assess potential opportunities, your client needs to understand the corporate governance practices within any organisation that they consider for investment, and so they are commissioning you to provide them with this analysis and assessment.

You are therefore required to research and evaluate the corporate governance practices for one of the following UK companies listed below.

Your analysis should describe the company’s current corporate governance arrangements and then offer a critical assessment in reference to the UK Corporate Governance Code (2018), highlighting any areas of non-compliance. As your client is an experienced UK investor they fully understand the UK code, and therefore the Code does not require explanation.

The key issue for your client is that their strategy is to expand their investment portfolio within the UK, and previously they have concentrated on the larger listed organisations within the FTSE-100. They are now considering investment in other listed companies outside of this group, but are unsure as to the level of corporate governance across the wider FTSE-350 group.

You should present your findings in a business report format, and conclude with appropriate recommendations as to how corporate governance may be improved, and your overall opinion as to whether or not the corporate governance arrangements are acceptable, which should then assist your client in their investment selection.

You are not advising your client as to whether they should invest or not, your advice should only relate to the company’s corporate governance and your client will then use your corporate governance advice as part of their overall investment criteria.

Your report should include the following: title page, contents page, executive summary (no more than 1 page), introduction, brief company background, current corporate governance arrangements, reference to the 2018 code, recommendations, conclusion/opinions, references, and appendices (where applicable). There is no requirement for a standard font size and/or line spacing, although reports should be presented in a professional and engaging style for your client, using headings and sub-headings as appropriate to indicate topics covered.

*Extracted from the FTSE All Share Index Ranking by market capitalisation on the 1st July 2020.

Overall word limit: 2500 max word count

SUBMISSION INSTRUCTIONS

Assignments and dissertations/business projects must not exceed the word count indicated in the module handbook/assessment brief.

The word count should:

• Include all the text, including title, preface, introduction, in-text citations, quotations, footnotes and any other items not specifically excluded below.
• Exclude diagrams, tables (including tables/lists of contents and figures), equations, executive summary/abstract, acknowledgements, declaration, bibliography/list of references and appendices. However, it is not appropriate to use diagrams or tables merely as a way of circumventing the word limit. If a student uses a table or figure as a means of presenting his/her own words, then this is included in the word count.

Examiners will stop reading once the word limit has been reached, and work beyond this point will not be assessed. Checks of word counts will be carried out on submitted work, including any assignments or dissertations/business projects that appear to be clearly over-length. Checks may take place manually and/or with the aid of the word count provided via an electronic submission. Where a student has intentionally misrepresented their word count, the School may treat this as an offence under Section IV of the General Regulations of the University. Extreme cases may be viewed as dishonest practice under Section IV, 5 (a) (x) of the General Regulations.

Very occasionally it may be appropriate to present, in an appendix, material which does not properly belong in the main body of the assessment but which some students wish to provide for the sake of completeness. Any appendices will not have a role in the assessment – examiners are under no obligation to read appendices and they do not form part of the word count. Material that students wish to be assessed should always be included in the main body of the text.

Guidance on referencing can be found in the programme handbook and on DUO.

MARKING GUIDELINES

Performance in the summative assessment for this module is judged against the following criteria:

• Relevance to question(s)
• Organisation, structure and presentation
• Depth of understanding
• Analysis and discussion
• Use of sources and referencing
• Overall conclusions

Guidance on referencing can be found in your Assessment handbook under ‘Things you Need to Know’ on DUO.

PLAGIARISM AND COLLUSION

Students suspected of plagiarism, either of published work or the work of other students, or of collusion will be dealt with according to School and University guidelines.

Your assignment will be put through the plagiarism detection service.

END OF ASSESSMENT