Hi Class:

Please review the Class Presentation for this week and briefly discuss what you are hearing/seeing in Business Finance News and address the questions below. Please Note: There is a new question (in red) that relates to our presentation this week. 

Finance is the heart and soul of any enterprise. It plays a vital role right from the establishment of a business to play an important role in driving its growth. Business finance refers to funds availed by business owners to meet their needs that may include commencing a business, obtaining top-up funds to finance business operations, obtaining finance to purchase capital assets for the business or to deal with a sudden cash crunch faced by the business. 

Briefly discuss what you are you hearing/seeing in Business Finance News addressing the questions below.

1. Look at Business Finance news (any viable source such as Yahoo Finance, Bloomberg, Reuters, CNN, CNBC, etc.) and include a brief discussion of the following. To address the questions below, please choose anyindustry/business that is offering a finance product where you have to pay interest. This can be a credit card, personal loan, mortgage, car loan, school loan etc.

1. Business Name: Why did you choose this business? (5 sentences min)
2. CEO or CFO Name: Do you have an opinion on how they are leading this company? Like or dislike their business strategy? (5 sentences minimum)
3. What does the company do?: Include a brief discussion about their specific products and services.  (5 sentences min)
4. What kind of financial product is this company offering (ie. credit cards, cars loans , mortgages?)? Select 1 of their finance products and briefly define what the interest “type” is (ie. “APR” or Annual Percentage Rate is….) and how it is calculated (APR is calculated by multiplying the periodic interest rate….). (3-5 sentences) 
5. Company Profits/Revenue (last year or what you can locate): From what you can find, are they doing well as a business? If so, what is working? If not, what is not working? Is there a strategy in place to retain or grow their profits/revenue? Yahoo Finance (Links to an external site.) (Links to an external site.) can be a good resource to locate this information. (5 sentences min)
6. Company Culture: Brief discussion of their current culture including what you like or dislike. What do the employees have to say on Glassdoor (Links to an external site.) (Links to an external site.) or any other employee review site? Would you work here? (5 sentences minimum)

This assignment should take between 30-45 minutes at minimum to complete. Use your resources (ie. textbook, class presentations, Internet) to conduct the appropriate research to successfully complete this assignment. 

There are NO restrictions on the kind of business you can address with these questions. It can range from Entertainment, Medical, Banking, Real Estate or Automotive. All I ask is that you use a viable/trustworthy  news resources such as MSNBC, CNN or Fox News (for example).

The purpose behind this exercise is to begin to open your eyes to the kinds of businesses that are out there and gain a better understanding of them. Also, if you have an idea of the kind of industry you would like to work in, please use this weekly exercise to investigate companies you would be interested working with. By doing research on a company prior to interviewing with them may be a crucial component to helping you find or even land the job you want.  

In order to receive full credit please also respond to at least 2 of your peer’s posts . When responding, please include what you liked or found interesting about the peer’s post. Please be respectful of others views and/or opinions.