BM414 Financial Decision Making CW1 Assignment Brief (SIG) | BNU

BM414 Assignment Task 

Company Background -Sheffield Insulations Group (SIG) plc. 

Sheffield Insulation Group (SIG) plc is a UK-based and international supplier of specialist construction products (Insulation, Roofing -exteriors and Ceiling -interior products). Initially, it was a small family-run business founded by Ernest Adsetts in 1957 at Sheffield and later listed on the London Stock Exchange (LSE) in 1989 as Sheffield Insulation Group (SIG) plc. This flotation resulted in a rapid expansion of SIG plc through mergers and acquisitions of various performing businesses, and now it operates in several European countries, including Ireland (SIG, 2024). 

Assume that the company is now planning to install a new production plant within the next five (5) years. This new instalment will enable SIG plc to reduce the production costs and meet its long-term sustainability and environmental goals. The company estimates that the new project would require them to raise £150 million (approx.) 

Required 

Task 1 (1,000 Words) 

Suppose you are part of the Accounting and Finance team at Sheffield Insulation Group (SIG) plc. You are required to write a report to the senior management team of SIG plc, discussing the importance of accounting and finance functions, roles and duties within SIG plc concerning both reporting and decision-making aspects. Your discussion should include some examples within the company where appropriate. (30 marks)

Task 2 (1,500 Words) 

Using the financial statements of Sheffield Insulation Group (SIG) plc. presented below, complete the following tasks: 

a) Define and explain the role of the following financial statements and their main elements, supporting them with the figures and trends from the below provided statements: 

• Income statement
• Statement of Financial Position. 

(15 marks) 

b) Using the figures presented in these financial statements, calculate the following ratios in each year: 

• Return on capital employed.
• Net profit margin
• Current ratio
• Average Receivable days/ Debtor's collection period
• Average Payable days/ Creditor's collection period
• Earnings per Share 

(20 marks) 

You should clearly show all the formulas and calculations. The figures should be rounded to two decimal places. Formulas and calculations are not part of the word count.

c) Using the results from your calculations, comment on the company's performance based on the results from and position between the two (2) years from (b), mentioning possible causes, reasons and effects for the changes in the ratios. 

In this section, please incorporate the discussion on the performance from an investor perspective, assuming that the company is planning to improve its production facilities within the next five (5) years and would need to raise approximately £150 million for this project. 

(25 marks)

Marks will also be awarded for Structure and Presentation skills. The structure includes the orderly presentation of relevant material. In addition, the extent of the research is evidenced by the appropriateness and adequacy of in-text referencing. 

There must be a Cover Page and Contents Page, an executive summary, sections with Introduction, Conclusion, List of References, and pages must be numbered. (10 marks) 

Please note that the word count excludes the cover page, the contents page, the executive summary, Formulas, and calculations in Task 2 (b), the list of references, and appendices (if there are any). 

Total marks: 100 

If you are registered with the Disability and Inclusion Services or have a disability, please contact your module leader to discuss how your reasonable adjustments will be applied to this assignment.

How Your Work Will Be Assessed 

Your work will be assessed against the assessment criteria, which have been provided at the end of this brief. 

These criteria have been designed specifically for this assignment and are intended to measure the extent to which you have demonstrated your achievement of its associated learning outcomes (see above). They have been aligned with the institutional grade descriptor appropriate for your level. 

The assessment criteria provide a basis for fair and consistent marking and indicate what is expected of you in this assignment. It is strongly recommended that you engage with them while you are working on the assignment and use them in combination with any feedback you receive once your work has been marked to help you plan for future learning and development. 

BM414 Submission Details

• This assignment should be submitted electronically. Please use the relevant Turnitin submission point in the Upload My Assignment area on LSST Connect.
• Please ensure that your work has been saved in an appropriate file format. Turnitin will only accept the following file types: Microsoft Word and PDF. Your file must also contain at least 20 words of text, consist of fewer than 400 pages and be less than 40MB in size.
• You can submit your work as many times as you like before the submission date. If you do submit your work more than once, your earlier submission will be replaced by the most recent version.
• Once you have submitted your work, you will receive a digital receipt as proof of submission, which will be sent to your LSST e-mail address. Please keep this receipt for future reference, along with the original electronic copy of your assignment.
• Please also note that work that is submitted up to 10 working days beyond the submission date will be considered a late submission. Late submissions will be marked and the actual mark recorded, but will be capped at the pass mark (typically 40%), provided that the work is of a passing standard. Work submitted after this period will not be marked and will be treated as a non-submission.

Before You Submit 

• Please use the provided checklist below to make sure you are 'fit to submit your work 
• We recommend you use this checklist as soon as you get this assignment brief to help you plan your work 

Fit to Submit: Assignment Checklist 

This brief assignment checklist is designed to help you avoid some of the most common mistakes students make in their coursework. 

Have you read the assignment brief? If not, do so now! 

In it, you will find details of the assessment task, word count, the assessment criteria your work is marked against, and the learning outcomes -the basis for the assessment strategy in each module. 

Students often lose marks by forgetting some of the more straightforward elements of their assignments. We recommend that you "tick off" each of the points below as you prepare your work for submission. 

• Have you read and understood the assessment criteria?
• Have you met the learning outcomes? You will lose marks and your work may even fail if you have not.
• Have you demonstrated you can think and write critically in the completed work? This means you have supported your arguments/explanations appropriately, e.g. using relevant academic sources and you have offered discussion points which extend your own or other viewpoints to make reasoned conclusions/judgements. 
• Have you maintained an appropriate tone throughout your work? Is your work formal, focused, developed and clear?
• Have you checked that the referencing in your assignment is in line with your programme requirements?
• Have you proofread your work and used spellcheck software to check your spelling and grammar?
• Have you checked that the presentation of your work is as specified by your tutor, for example, font size, colour, style, line spacing and margins as the tutor specified? 
• Have you kept to the word count (or equivalent)? If you are not sure, check with your tutor.
• Can you confirm that the work submitted is your own and maintains academic integrity?