Report Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Report - Assignment Example The four year court battle resulted into a hefty $1.5bn dollar penalty to the affected regulators in the US, UK and Switzerland. It is against this backdrop of failures by such financial institutions entrusted with this critical role that this report is compiled. The scope of this report is to try and quantify the effect of risk attitude on company performance indicators and the impact this may have on their perceived change of attitude (Shotter, 2012). To achieve this goal, Chief executive officers (CEOs) of large financial institutions in the City of London were asked to fill in a questionnaire aimed at assessing their attitude towards risks. The so called large financial institutions were those listed in The Financial Times as so, based on the size of their workforce. Data Primary data was collected from 100 CEOs where their responses on the questionnaire were scored out of 30 -one being the most conservative towards risks and 30 being the highest risk assessment. Baseline informa tion provided the secondary data for the same set of financial institutions, gathered from two articles published in 2007 and in 2009 that had measured the risks in these same institutions. Data on three additional variables was also collected in order to assess the volatility in performance of the companies. Table 1 summarizes the variables of interest for this analysis. Table 1: Variables description Variable Description RISKATT_AFTER CEOs questionnaire score RISKATT_BEFORE Baseline data from publications MAX_SHARE The maximum share price of the company in the last 30 days MIN_SHARE The minimum share price of the company in the last 30 days SD_SHARE The standard deviation of the share prices of the company in the last 30 days Objectives With this information, we sought to answer the following objectives: 1) To assess the change of CEOs attitude towards risk before and after the UBS bank scandal 2) To quantify the correlation (if any) between the companies’ risk attitudes an d their volatility. Methodology In seeking to meet the above set objectives, statistical analysis tools were applied. In particular SPSS statistical software version 20 was used for the analysis. Moreover, the nature of the data was taken into account in choosing the methodology to use. For instance, for the first objective, we wished to assess the difference in risk assessment before and after the UBS bank scandal. The data was collected from the same companies hence forming dependent pairs. For this objective therefore, an appropriate test was the paired t-test. For the second objective, an extra variable coded as the SHARE_RANGE was derived by getting the range in the company’s share price for the past 30 days. This was to be used as a predictor for a regression model. Scatter plot matrices as well as Pearson’s correlation estimates were obtained as a guide to assessing the linear relation between the variables of interest and where appropriate, linear regression mo dels were fit and the necessary diagnostics performed. Results Results of performing a paired t-test on the companies’ score on risk assessment before and after the UBS bank scandal are summarized in the following section. To begin with, a

Project Cost Control Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Project Cost Control - Essay Example Costs are defined as anything that does not add value to the system rather consumes resources, capital, time or other related functions and components of the project. Steve Odland, in his assessment of the methods by which the costs may be controlled defines the interaction with the customers as one of the reasons based on which the costs can be controlled. According to his views, the customers provide sufficient information and guidelines regarding the utility based projects and items and those that do not add value or are little needed and desired by the customers. The response of the customers enable knowing what to produce and what to avoid in the future trends and projects (Odland, 2012). Another area that is often termed as a serious point with regard to the handling of the costs is the inventory. Inventory often takes up large amount of resources and material. Many companies and projects fail only because of the bulk of the inventory in stock. The stocks lead to consuming space, budget and other associated items which result in the non production of the productive items and products that would otherwise be kept and reserved in limited quantity (KACHWALA, 2009, p. 92). Identifying the defective products, processes and all those activities and components that lead to the consumption of resources, energy and material are amounted to as costs. The time and resources spent would otherwise be spent in the production of the new items and material. Adhering to the terms and conditions that are set forth in the early phases of the project and overall organizational tasks are also important. Often the lag incurs on the account of the deviation from the initially set forth conditions based on which the project had been started. The failure to do so results in delay. It also results in the extra resources usage and many more associated functions and discrepancies within the system and project at hand. Transportation means and communication sources are