The project has two segments - oral presentation and a written report.  There are two types of topics you can choose from.  You can choose a company (or a few companies in an industry) or choose a general topic (e.g. Can merger success be predicted with financial statements?).  Your team (up to 4 members) must decide on a topic and tell me by the 3rd class.  When you tell me your topic, you must also give me a copy (or send an email copy) of the company's annual report and or the 10-Ks to me.  After that, your team must schedule a meeting with me to talk about the issues you will be analyzing.  Try to search the financial press (first pass: Fortune, Forbes, Business Week, Wall Street Journal and New York Times) for articles about the firm and email me.  When you come to the meeting with me, please bring the basic financial statements, and any articles.  At the meeting,  we will come up with a set of customized issues and topics that you should focus in your presentation.  Some topics are (Note that this list is not comprehensive and you need not include every item on the list) 110822

1 ¤  Company Profile; Financial Information and Snapshots of the company
2 ¤  Financial Statements; Common size and summary statements;
3 ¤  Accounting methods (liberal or conservative); Off balance sheet items; Related party transactions
4 ¤  Growth or lack thereof; How did the company finance growth - analyze CFI, CFO and CFF
5 ¤  Ratios and comparison with industry (top market caps) and competitors
6 ¤  Stock overview, quotes, charts from last few years)
7 ¤  Risk; Debt and bond ratings; Bankruptcy probability; z-score
8 ¤  Key Developments; News from the financial press; Press Releases; Lawsuits; Political and social criticisms
9 ¤  Market Sentiment;  Performance; Shares Shorted; Insider Trading; Institutional Holders

10 ¤  Corporate governance issues; executive turnover

11 ¤  Professional Analysis; Earnings Estimates; Your recommendations

Depending on the most interesting issues that arise out of your company choice, I will schedule your group presentation in classes 6 to 15.  For example, if debt and borrowing issues are the most important factor for your company, you will be scheduled for presentation in the 7th class.  You also need to do a general company written report incorporating all the topics raised in the course.  Guidelines are given below and the written report it is due in the last week of the term.

Choosing companies:  Choose a company or industry that you may be interested for a career. Please do not choose foreign or financial or real estate firms.  Some of the companies that are interesting and the ones that I can help are Chicago companies including Walgreen's, UAL, Sears, McDonalds and Abbott.  Other perennial favorites include Gap, AMR, Cisco. Merck, Target, Time-Warner AOL, Maytag, GE and Wal-Mart.  You can a learn a lot about US capital markets by analyzing the financial statements of these firms.