Air Canada Ltd Case
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HO 2.2 Exercise independent judgement and initiative in adapting and applying knowledge and skills for effective planning, problem solving and decision making in diverse contexts.
Social, Ethical and Global Understanding (SE)
SE 5.1 Demonstrate and apply knowledge of ethical and legal principles and practices in analysing and responding to business issues
SE 5.2 Demonstrate and apply knowledge of socially responsible behaviour in analysing and addressing business issues in national and international business contexts.
Background:
As business and financial markets have become increasingly globalised, the significance of the differences in the international financial accounting policies, and disclosure and reporting practices of global corporations, has become more important, especially from the perspective of management, financial analysts, shareholders, pension/superannuation funds and other users of financial statements. For these key interest groups, it is vital not only to be aware of international differences in financial accounting policies and practices, but also to be able to assess their impact on earnings/profits and assets and key performance indicators and ratios, for example, return on assets. Additional key issues in globalised business operations relate to an understanding and appreciation of cultural diversity issues and the global trends in international taxation and international audit.
Purpose:
Completion of this cross-cultural and cross-discipline project is of critical importance to your understanding of the key issues that global corporations and their stakeholders experience on a daily basis. The knowledge required to successfully complete your major project is also of critical importance to your final exam preparation. As highlighted in the weekly submissions’ assessment task, by completing the weekly tutorial work, with appropriate references to the relevant mandatory readings, you are consistently working towards the completion of both your project and the required project reference list.
Availability of Major Project Task:
The Major Project task details are set out on pp. 4–8 of this document. The content needed to complete this project is directly related to the weekly lecture material reviewed and analysed in the weekly tutorial submissions and presentations. Note also that detailed solutions are provided each week under the Feedback heading to assist you.
Feedback
After the assignments have been marked, you will be provided feedback with any strengths and weaknesses associated with the assignment submitted, to assist you in your preparation towards the final examination. To ensure that all students receive the same level of feedback and support, please use the Discussion Board Forum that is set up for the ‘Major Project’ on the Blackboard to raise any queries in respect of the assignment. All students are encouraged to check the Discussion Board for any updates/answers to the queries. It has been a very helpful site for students in previous semesters in completing their assignment.
Assessment Criteria
Please refer to the CRA for the ‘Major Project’ posted under the Assessment tab on Blackboard.
Submission Details
Assignment Length:
The word limit is 1500 words for the answers to your project question – which excludes any Executive Summary, Contents Page, the Bibliography and the content of the Working Papers/Appendices attached for the marker (e.g. tables/charts, the extracts of the financial statements or extracts from articles).
Note: The marker will stop reading your assignment once the word limit has been reached.
Formatting and Referencing:
Please refer to the task requirements for the project – i.e. your final submission must answer all the assignment questions.
Remember that your written expression is important in that we need to be able to understand your answers. That is, your responses should exhibit clear English expression and should contain a minimum number of grammatical errors.
The content of your written, project answers and any supporting appendices should be fully supported by references using QUT’s “Cite and Write” document available from the library website as further detailed in the referencing workshop in Week Two. You may select whichever referencing you prefer (there are four examples given in this referencing document), however, this choice must then be used consistently in your reference list.
Content of Appendices/Working Papers:
In order for the marker to accurately assess your responses, you must provide copies of the pages from the Annual Reports and Financial Statements that you used for each of your three companies. These extracts must be attached to your written answers to the project questions in your Working Papers/Appendices.
Please retain all drafts of your project answers and appendices until after the final results for the AYB227 subject are formally released.
Individual Project Task Requirements: Air Canada Ltd – Global FDI Options
Air Canada – Background Information:
Air Canada is Canada’s largest domestic and international airline serving more than 200 airports on six continents. Canada’s flag carrier is among the 20 largest airlines in the world and in 2015 served more than 41 million customers. Air Canada provides scheduled passenger service directly to 64 airports in Canada, 55 in the United States and 87 in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Asia, Australia, the Caribbean, Mexico, Central America and South America. Air Canada is a founding member of Star Alliance, the world’s most comprehensive air transportation network serving 1,330 airports in 192 countries. Air Canada is the only international network carrier in North America to receive a Four-Star ranking according to independent U.K. research firm Skytrax.
Reference: http://www.aircanada.com/en/about/investor/index.html
Assessment Task Requirements:
You are an independent investment consultant employed by Air Canada Ltd (ACL). In order to maximise returns/after-tax profits for investors while also diversifying investment risk, the Board of Directors of ACL would like to further expand the company’s operations within the airline industry globally. This investment is to take place through the purchase of $300 million in shares in an existing, successful, airline company.
In order to fulfil this objective, the ACL Directors, require you to start your analysis by referring to three documents to assist you in making your investment decision.
1: The List of the World’s Top 100 Airlines in 2016. http://www.worldairlineawards.com/awards/world_airline_rating.html
[cont’d]
2: The 2016 List of the Global Fortune 500 companies. http://beta.fortune.com/global500/
3: The 2015 A. T. Kearney Report – FDI on the Rebound – PDF. https://www.atkearney.com/gbpc/foreign-direct-investment-confidence-index
As a result of their own reading of these documents, three culutrally different regions globally are of interest to the Directors as highlighted below:
- Anglo Saxon countries (e.g. US, UK, Australia, Canada, former Commonwealth member countries such as India, Malaysia, Singapore etc. and the Nordic countries of Denmark, Netherlands and Sweden)
- the Germanic/Latin countries (e.g. France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Czech Republic, Switzerland, Brazil, Chile, Argentina and Mexico); and
- the Asian countries (e.g. China and Japan).
Your task is to, firstly, select three listed, airline companies only with one company from each of the different cultural regions. That is, you must select one Anglo Saxon company, one Germanic/Latin company and one Asian company.
Second, you must respond to the specific questions from the Directors of ACL as set out below. Note, while you are NOT expected to produce a formal report for the Directors, you need to remember that you are ‘speaking’ directly to the Directors in each of your responses, therefore, these responses must be written in a business/formal format rather than in an essay style.
Note: Your answers must also include the headings provided below and must meet the overall word limit set for this task.
