Financial Statement Analysis

Financial Statement Analysis Memo 1
Submission
Students will be required to submit a PDF version of this assignment to the website where it will be subject to similarity review (turnitin.com). Your memo must comply with the Memorandum Writing Guidelines. Memo due date in Canvas: Saturday, October 9, 2021, at 11:59 pm.
Grading Protocol
The following items will affect your final grade: Following Requirements, Tone, Capitalization/Acronyms, Adherence to Writing Guidelines, Citations, Grammar, Punctuation, Formatting, and Spelling. This FSA Memo is worth 30 points, distributed as follows: 20 for content & formatting of the appendices, 10 for content, writing, length of memo page. Questions/Clarifications Review
this assignment and its requirements carefully. If there is any part of it you find confusing or do not understand, submit a question via the ‘inbox’ function on the website. All submitted questions will be reviewed; some questions (not all), and their respective answers, may be provided to all sections.
Background:
You belong to a consulting group that helps business leaders transform their organizations. Your competitive advantage is that your group can thoroughly research accounting guidance and analyze complex financial statements while explaining these matters in a manner that is easily understood by your clients. Janine Harris, a local entrepreneur has run several businesses and wants to know if ‘ESG disclosures’ need to be made in the financial statements of her latest business endeavor, a publicly traded company. She heard from ‘a friend’ that you will get in trouble with the ‘government’ if you do not disclose ESG issues in with your financial statements. Ms. Harris does not want any trouble with ‘the authorities’ as she just wants to make beaucoup profit.
Assignment:
In this FSA you are, as an individual, to investigate/determine what the ‘ESG’ disclosure rules really are in the current financial reporting environment (U.S. GAAP). You will present a one-page memo with supporting appendices (many pages) that address the requirements of the assignment and help Janine Harris understand ESG disclosure requirements.
Submittal of Work Product:
You are to submit the following for FSA #1:
a. The content of your work-product should be as follows:
i. One-page memo (not more than 500 words), follow memo guidelines.
ii. Appendices that support the paragraphs of your memo page.
b. ‘Client ready’ formatting for all appendices pages of the memo will earn more points that sloppy display.
Requirements for One-Page Memo and Appendices
1. State the purpose of this FSA memo. This explanation should be brief, and the paragraph should have no more than 2 sentences.
2. The concise paragraphs that constitute your memo body should be the result of your investigation of the disclosure rules regarding ESG disclosures for financial reporting.
i. As a minimum (and this is not an inclusive listing) you should at least consider the following questions: What is ESG? What is driving ESG? What is the Value Reporting Foundation? Who and what is the SASB? What is sustainability to the SASB? What does SEC regulation S-K have to do with climate change? What does the codification have to say about ‘ESG’? What is ASC 275? Are ‘concentrations of risk’ and ESG related? What is a ‘concentration of risk’ in the world of GAAP? How about having an appendix that shows an example of ESG disclosure/reporting of a publically traded company?
ii. Have you addressed Janine’s concerns about what she is required to disclose?
3. Conclude the memo with a closing paragraph that summarizes where you believe the disclosure requirements of ESG are heading in the future.
Make sure any tables and appendices are formatted so that Janine Harris can easily understand them:
• Use labels, borders, font size, etc. to improve understandability.
• You should indent and underline sub-totals. • Use care to size columns so as not to have too much or too little space.
• Round percentages using common sense (e.g., 15.0034% violates common sense, but 0.0034% does not). Sloppy tables will receive deductions.
• Make sure number and label indentation has some pattern to it (e.g., left justified vs. right justified).