A Potential Investor

Your team has been hired as accounting consultants to advise a potential investor of a company of your choosing. You have to find a company with available financial reports referred to the same time period but prepared in accordance with two accounting standards: RAS and US GAAP, or RAS and IFRS, or US GAAP and IFRS. "Gazpromneft" consolidated financial statements is a good example, but you obviously may not choose this report for your project. You have to find all substantial differences between these two types of reporting and explain them by applying the theoretical concepts and frameworks from the course. The questions below may help you and guide you through the project, though these questions should not limit your creativity while working on this project.

* What was the reason for financial statements preparation in accordance with two types of accounting standards?

* What adjustments and re-classifications were done to present the financial information in accordance with these standards?

* What are the differences in estimates and assumptions, that managers have to make that affect the amounts, reported in financial statements prepared in two standards?

* What are the major distinctions in assets, liabilities, shareholders' equity, revenues, expenses and earnings reported in different standards?

* How may the investor's decision be affected by the type of accounting standards?

Team Selection

This is a team assignment. Students will be grouped into teams of 4 to 5 members. Once assigned to one of the teams, you are not allowed to change the team. One of the goals of this project is to practice working collaboratively - obtaining better results by drawing on everyone's knowledge and building working relationships despite differences in opinions and priorities. Substantial contribution of each of the team members to the project is expected. I reserve the right to ask you to rate and to comment on, the contributions to your team that were made by each of your fellow team members throughout the project. Your responses, which will be held in strict confidence, may be used in "borderline" project and course grade decisions.

Project Selection

Teams may select any firm of their choosing. I suggest (but not require) that teams favor public as opposed to private firms since data are more available on public firms.

Deliverables

Each team will be required to submit a printed report (bring it to the class and send via e-mail) and ppt presentation (send it via e-mail), both are due by 9.59 p.m.(21.59) November 24, 2013. I will use a penalty system for late submissions with 10% deducted for each day that a submission is