Financing Strategies for Firms in Selected Sectors: An Evaluation of Non-bank Financial Institutions

In this assignment students will be asked to produce a report to a C - level officer discussing how a firm in a selected sector could finance its activities and critically evaluate the impact of non-bank financial institutions in such organisation’s funding strategies.

In your assignment, you will have the opportunity to apply your knowledge and understanding acquired in this module including ways of raising capital as well as crowdfunding strategies.

Assessment Criteria

1. Preparation of professional report – Your report must have a title page, contents, executive summary, formatted tables, figures, and equations, to mention a few. Ensure that your report is well structured. Marks will be awarded to a coherently discussed and layout report.

Basic requirements

The report should have the following:

• Title page
• Content page
• Table and figures
• Brief background of the selected company

Marks will be allocated to each of the above (5 marks)

2. Investigate how the firm raised its current capital and discuss potential ways of raising future funding with the help of non-bank financial institutions including crowdfunding if possible.

The report should describe how the company raised its capital and alternative ways of raising future capital/funding. At a minimum, this discussion should include:

• Discussion of how the company raised its current capital
• Description of the composition of the company’s capital structure. For banks and similar entities, students should discuss capital structure based on BASEL III guidelines.
• Discuss other means of raising fund. At a minimum, students should discuss the use of:
  • Debt Capital
  • Additional Equity Capital
  • Retained Earnings
  • Crowdfunding (20 marks)

3. Discuss the role of hedge funds, investment banks, mutual funds and other financial companies in the financial system; Comment on which of these firms have been used by your selected company. Marks will be allocated to a detailed analysis of how the finance company was used by your selected company.

Discuss the following and how the selected company used any of them in funding strategy:

• Commercial banks
• Investment banks
• Hedge funds
• Mutual funds
• Finance Companies (20 marks)

4. Proper citation of references: 5 marks will be awarded for a correct citing and referencing within the main body of the assignment (this includes the proper use of references where needed inside your assignment). 5 marks will be awarded for a correctly provided list of references at the end of the

Citation of References

• Citing and referencing in the main body of assignment using Harvard style
• List of References at the end of the assignment (5 marks)

Students may include information and explanations offered by the companies and their managers, financial analysts, and financial press but you should provide your critical evaluation. Making clear your contribution with your interpretation and evaluation is a key element of a good essay.

Any time you use information, data or other material you must properly acknowledge it in the text and report the source appropriately in the list of references at the end. If you use an actual extract from a source, you should place it in speech quotes. Your references to sources in the text and the reporting of sources in the list of references should be in line with the references in the academic literature.