​​ Scenario: You are a financial analyst and you have been hired by a group of risk averse investors with limited knowledge (i.e. your "target audience") to prepare a written report. The written report is to provide a recommendation as to whether the investors should buy more Virgin shares, sell their current holdings, or hold their current holdings until a later date.

Task: Your group is to prepare a report of no more than 2,500 words. A 10% allowance of this word limit is allowed to acknowledge the inclusion of in-text references and appendices – note: appendices are for the reader's/marker's reference and do not provide additional marks, however lack of appendices may result in lower marks. The word limit excludes the executive summary which itself should not exceed 250 words.

Purpose: The purpose of this assignment is to test students' ability to scope, synthesise and evaluate information for investors' decision making. It asks students to appreciate the context and operations of a real company. Students will need to thoroughly research and reference their work including all company reports that have been used. In general, attention must be given to not only summarising 'facts' about the case study company (and competitors), but

critically analysing past performance, current trends and forming strongly reasoned recommendationsfor investment decision making. Quality of arguments, the way information is used to justify evaluations, and the soundness (viability) of recommendations for the target

audience will be important for scoring higher marks. Analysis and recommendations: In preparing your recommendation, you can use any of the analytical approaches/tools/methods learnt in this course. As part of developing professional judgement, and application of this judgement, students will need to evaluate which analytical approaches/tools/methods they decide to apply (or not to apply) and why.

1 of 8 Furthermore, the report should appraise which approaches/tools/methods produce results which are weighted more in forming recommendations to investors. As a purely hypothetical

example, you may use 2 different analytical models to discuss the competitive context of Virgin Australia. However, the 2 models may yield slightly contradictory results in terms of your recommendation for investors. Therefore, as an analyst, you will need to choose which model to rely on the most in forming your opinions about the company.