The Australian retailer Woolworths Ltd. and Lowe,s,a US based hardware chain,started Masters Home Improvement in 2011, a joint-venture to penetrate the hardware retail market and challenge the dominance of Bunnings Warehouse, owned by the rival Wesfarmers. Four years down the line,Woolworth investment in Masters Home Improvement is proving a financial disaster. Declining financial performance of the retailer and the Master,s debacle has prompted the recent resignation of Woolworts' Chief Executive Grant O'Brien.The article written by Emily Stewart for the ABC news provides a brief but poignant analysis of what went wrong. Write a Report which analyses the financial performance and financial position of Woolworth from 2012 until 2015. After reading the Chairman,s reports and the Managing Director,s reports included in the 2012,2013, and 2013 annual reports. Discuss how Woolworth' Annual reports have described the investment in Masters Home Improvement,in the light of the continuing failure of the project documented in the press. Is there any discrepancy between the stories as told by the Chairman and the Managing director and the performance of Woolworth and of Masters Home Improvement as presented by the financial statements(Income Statement and Statement of Financial Position)? Do you think that the directors have put a ''spin'' in the way they report the results? In answering these questions you need to provide evidence drawn from the Woolworth Annual reports and from some sources of information outside the business, mostly from the financial press( or from the financial sections of the main newspapers). ASSIGNMENT STRUCTURE Title page Introduction Analysis of the financial performance and position of Woolworth from 2012 to 2015 Analysis and discussion of the Chairman and managing Director,s sections of the annual reports published in 2012,2013, and 2013 and 2014 Conclusion: Provides a summary of the issues raised,with concluding remarks. Each page must be numbered and must show the total number of pages(eg, page 1 of 10) and every page must have a header that identifies your full name,Id number and Unit Code