What did the special few who take this exam think? I liked Question 1, but thought the stuff on Quantitative Easing was rather out of left field. They're entitled, I guess, especially given quite a few easy marks on the effects of low interest rates and monetary policy framework. Not too sure how to score the other two questions; could go well or horribly wrong. (ActEd: any clue what first principles means?) Overall a tougher paper than a lot of past exam papers, but not too difficult to be completely hopeless. "Completely" being the operative word.
September 2012 paper Hi, Sorry for the late reply (I didnt get notified of the post for some strange reason). I thought the paper was OK - pretty much in line with previous sittings. As you say, plenty of easy marks for QE and monetary policy to get you half way there. A nice big bit on sovereign risk too, which can be answered from bookwork. The trickier questions were 2 and 3 where you had to carefully read the question for the key words that shape your answer. A generic answer wouldnt score many marks here. Generally a do-able paper though. Hope it went well and that you passed it
Just going through this paper, and thought the solutions in the examiner's report look strange for Q2(iv) first customer - a large international conglomerate. My reading is the company trying to centralise the debt holdings / investment... whereas the solution seems to focus on centralising source of debt (raising), although the contents still pretty much apply. Am I the only odd one?
This was DEFINITELY not the easy part of the paper. Quite difficult to see what the examiner wanted here, and also difficult to know where generic ideas score marks (fixed or floating) and where specifics were required (Foreign exchange. the eventual product ...) There were other questions in this paper though that were much more run of the mill.
