No Calculations WHYYYYYY!!!

Hello All,
after sitting last Fridays exam, i was shocked by the fact that there were no calculations included in the exams, and by calculations i mean no balance sheet, or ratio analysis (in fact just to spite i felt like they gave you the actual ratios!!)

In fact the only time i had to dig out my calculator for was the multiple choice questions (allowing me to take longer than the 2 minutes the 10 questions should take. lol)

No mercy form the examiners- even to calculate a simple Cost of equity? write a beta formula, wacc? ONE RATIO!!?!!!

since i didn't do the Apr 2012 exam this was totally unexpected for me (i thought since i did the ACTED mock- they would've been similar) so i didn't even look at it!, i guess if i did i would've expected this more...

this exam was borderline for me.... i think 20/20 for Multiple choice, and 40/80 for the rest...

 

I know. Those were meant be some banker marks for me.

I spent a long time making sure that the ratios and WACC formulae were nailed and all to no avail.

Was writing for the whole 3 hours so know just have to hope that what I wrote was coherant and mark-worthy!

Anyway, time to forget about this until December...

 

Gotta admit that this was a pretty hard paper, slightly tougher made by the fact that I felt some of the MCQ were a little harder compared to April.

I was really pressured for time in this one.

Let's just say I would be lucky to get 6/10 for MCQ part, and as for the rest.... don't think I've passed this one.

Until December!

 

I'd be interested to know what conclusions people came to for Q19. There was only a limited amount of analysis I could come up with in trying to work out how each of the two companies would change the financial indicators of the holding company. It most mostly just guesswork and i'm worried that I missed something entirely.

 

I know, it's annoying that in the past, you could get a nice balance sheet and income statement and bingo, 15 marks in the bag for very little effort. How times have changed! But of course we still need to chug through these during revision, just in case. Surely this should just be taken out of the course if they're not going to bother examining it?

Not a great paper I didn't think, quite a few tricky multi choice, wasn't sure of a couple of the 5 markers, and the two long questions weren't great either.

Glad everyone else found it tough though!

 

tbh i was just confused abut that question, i wasn't sure if the lower gearing in the other two companies will increase or decrease the holding company's overall gearing (surely it depends if they use debt, equity finance or reserves to buy the company) and if they did will it increase or reduce their gearing risk? the time i had left confused me enough that i couldn't think though a decision.

with ROCE/profitability, i just talked about how they might benefit form economies of scale, management of the holding company (because if i remember correctly the holding company's profitability was much better than both), which might in teh long run inc their profitability, i think i rambled on about other things too... but to be honest, not a nice question for me, i've never seen such in the past questions i did (2005-2011)