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The rebooking option is available now.

Please note that after choosing the date, you’re directed back to the ACCA web site to make a payment. On the right you see a credit balance. You have to press on the payment button there. You don’t have to pay anything, but if you don’t click the button, the exam isn’t confirmed!

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I don’t see the rebooking option yet, but the ACCA video on rebooking says it can take up to 48 hours option for that option to appear.

The video on rebooking is here:

https://www.accaglobal.com/gb/en/student/exam-entry-and-administration/about-our-exams/remote-exams/remote-session-exams/on-exam-day/remote-session-exam-withdrawal-videos.html

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Also working for me now.

If you tried before, you need to clear your cache.

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It’s not a cache issue. Many people have tried that already.

It’s a backend issue on ACCA’s side.

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arif59 wrote: So this is not only affecting the downloading of the docket but also starting the actual exam?

Correct. You access the remote exams via the “Book exam” page, which unfortunately isn’t working for us.

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arif59 wrote:I feel like I’ve forgotten half of my studies from stressing out over this.

Same here. ACCA is failing its students in a big way. Yet again!

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ranganaherath wrote:For the Bonus scheme Q what did you writr

Management was 2 parts: 1) achievement of customer satisfaction and 2) profit or something

I answered:

Clear: not clear what success of survey means? Not specific enough. 3 out of 5? 4 out of 5?

Controllable: customer satisfaction influenced by many things. Manager doesn’t have control over what other departments do.

Profit (or whatever it was)

Clear: I think it was clear

Controllable: again, influenced by many factors

Motivation: management and non-management both get 5%/10% bonus. That’s not motivating for management. They have more responsibility and should get higher bonus.

Non-management:

I think it was something like profit or revenues for their retail unit.

Clear: clear only if they set a specific profit goal each year.

Controllable: no. Could be due to many factors, e.g. bad economy, bad location of retail shop

Motivating: yes. 5%/10% is motivating

Conclusion: don’t adopt because not clear/controllable. But current scheme also not great.

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parthwadhwa007 wrote:Hey can anyone brief out the question with the marks weightage please… much appreciated…

I can’t remember the breakdown for Q1 but for Q2/Q2:

Q2
A Score assessment of a company
15 points
Problems of qualitative measures such as A score
10 points

Q3
EMA costs types
8 points
input output analysis
9 points
Life cycle costing evaluation for a given product
8 points

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@pacmq

“I used only the figures of Forttu Co”

You had to use both companies. I think the question said 50:50 weighted (rather than by market value).

Forttu had the complication that their business was 80% other and 20% construction. So you had to adjust the figure.

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@lkleponyte

“What expiry date you used when choosing futures. I was so confused, transaction is 1st of Sep so at first at picked December’s futures then I went for September, thinking that it expires at the end of the month, leaving 1 month unexpired basis”

That sounds correct to me.

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I had the following questions:

1) Company wants to build some construction.

Pros and cons of using debt

Get asset beta based on equity beta from competitors (calculate market value of debt and equity; adjust asset beta for one company 20:80).

Calculate yield and market value of debt

Calculate equity beta, gear

Calculate market value of debt and equity

Calculate WACC

Write report (but there wasn’t much to write???)

(I did not have to calculate NPV or APV… or did I miss that???)

Explain why APV may be better than NPV

Can they use securitisation on the new construction for future investment?

2) Hotel company bought restaurant company, it’s not doing well.

3 options:

Shut down

Restructure

Sell

Explain what MBI is

Show balance sheet after restructuring

Create valuation with FCF and growth model

Talk about MBI: how much do they need to raise; what valuation

How would company decide what to do?

3)

Multilateral netting: show table and cash flows

Forward and money market: simple calculation

Explain when to use forward contract vs money market

What policies does company need for derivatives

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“Is anyone else having issues seeing the Poll?”

Yes, doesn’t work in Firefox but works in Chrome.

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4b change management [commercial acumen]

I didn’t do well here, even though change management should have been an easy question. I couldn’t find much in the case study to make it relevant, so I talked quite generally.

Change: biggest problem is people. They might resist change.

Communicate early. Get them involved. Have them own it.

Unfreeze: as above, communicate.
Change: training. switch over
Refreeze: make sure people don’t use old ways. Not clear to me if old newsletter would continue or be discontinued.

I had a hard time linking it to the case.

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4a analyse e-marketing proposal from financial and non-financial

NVP is positive, payback period is low (~3 years)

Not clear where 10% discount rate comes from (or was this mentioned? I missed the part that building can be used to secure loan)

Close relationship between CEO and CU (sister): is proposal fair? What about potential scandals (giving money to family)

25/15% numbers are made up. No experience with charity. Wouldn’t individual donations go up by more?

Numbers are exactly the same in all years. Probably higher in first year, then go down (since you can’t retain all new donors)

Social media maintenance is constant. Would go up (platform getting more popular; inflation)

Why is social media outsourced? This should be done in-house (I failed to link to current web site which is out-of-date because of this exact reason!)

Subsidy would go up because of more course attendance: why take average subsidy? Can’t we use e-marketing to promote those courses which make a profit?

Subsidy: if this is a direct implication, it should be part of the NVP calculation (is this correct???)

Recommendation: against. E-marketing makes sense but proposal has many questions and problem with CEO-sister. Obtain 2 more proposals and compare.

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3b identify stakeholders that are interested in internal controls; justify whether they should get information about internal controls

Council: gives a lot of funding. Funding might stop if they don’t see internal controls. Council has a lot of interest and power

Company donors: give donations. Smaller but still significant. If one company stops, other companies might also stop (close community). This would increase interest/power

Individual donations / public: charity scandals in newspaper: increased interest. not much power. but still

(Is interest/power, i.e. Mendelow, the right model?)

Justification: donations would stop (especially council). This is a bit weak. What else could I have said? Maybe charities working in the public interest?

Other stakeholders I did not mention: maybe regulation

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3a comment on risk management approach

150 risks is good but needs prioritisation. Identify likelihood and impact
Needs clear owners. Risks assigned to executive team members randomly. Do they own it?
Agreed to do risk exercise again at some point in future. Needs clear, regular schedule. Risks change all the time
Establish risk committee (not sure this answer was appropriate)

I did not comment on the example risk register but I’m sure there was a problem that that could have been pointed out

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2a) Evaluate course portfolio

Computer basics:

Numbers going down.
Course out of date. First course and not updated since (i.e. 20 years old)
IT changes quickly
Course could be dropped
Council puts emphasis on IT skills
Don’t drop but modernize course

Web development course

Numbers going up
Course is full
Skills in demand. Council like IT skills
Increase price (high demand, marketable skills)
Add more capacity

Find a job

Only profitable course
Profitable because run by volunteers (idea for other courses)
Expand

Business skills

Popular
Makes huge loss
Why? Because it’s new? Or other reasons?
Course can’t be dropped because of council requirement
Charity has connections to companies in community (company donors). Ask them to teach course for free to reduce costs

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1a) CEO email: ??? and staff impact of email; consider tone and style

Tone: not nice. use of “pathetic” is not professional (not even in company)

Style: very direct (no greeting in email, very straight to the point)

Impact on staff: low motivation. people might leave (especially volunteers)

old CEO: participatory, left decisions to staff (which model to use?)

new CEO: “tells” (autocratic). not appropriate (especially for volunteers: you need to convince them, motivate them)

1b) comment on criticism in email from staff rep and whether CEO should adopt different leadership style

rep made some unsubstantiated points: staff miss old CEO (true but not fault of new CEO), CEO only focuses on money (imho not warranted from email), pointless rules (which rules?).

leadership style not appropriate: charity is all about community. needs to be more participatory.

CEO should meet people face to face, build connection. get them more involved.

However, it’s clear CEO has a lot of experience.

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What does sharing information on internal controls mean in practice?

What level of detail is shared? Is this different between charities and companies?

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Remote exams can only be booked for countries listed on the Covid-19 page: https://www.accaglobal.com/ca/en/student/exam-entry-and-administration/covid-19-exam-availability.html

India is not listed there at the moment.

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WeWork looks like a really interesting company for topic 17. So many CG problems and scandals…

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@joycefoo said:
Hi Gillian, can i know your charge pls

415 GBP (25% discount for early birds), see https://absolutementoring.uk/complete-and-perfect-mentoring-package/

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I don’t know about Boston but San Jose, California is $80 extra.

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I don’t know about Montreal but it’s $80 in San Jose, California.

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@bereank you’re absolutely correct. It’s September 2018. That’s good news for me.

[Author]

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