The short and long term financial strategy of a listed company of your Essay

The short and long term financial strategy of a listed company of your choice - Essay Example The impression gained by lenders and investors have a direct bearing on the movement of stock prices of a company and, as is commonly known, any downward movement of stock prices immediately generates negative sentiments in the market that have a direct adverse effect on the goodwill of the organization (Arnold 2005). No organization of repute can afford to accept a smear on its goodwill as that has a very great impact on its turnover and profitability. Moreover, a company that does not have goodwill in the market is very rarely is able to gather funds from the market when it is need of it and always has to struggle with high interest rates that it has to pay if it wishes to borrow from commercial banks or institutional lenders. Thus, this report is of vital importance to any corporate entity as it can make or mar its future. To prevent any manipulation of figures, authorities all over the world have made it mandatory that such accounts must be vetted and audited by statutory auditor s and submitted to registrar of companies in prescribed formats (Pike and Neale 2009). This assignment examines in detail Annual Report of Accenture and draws important and vital conclusions about the company. Accenture – background details of the company (Oliveira 2008) Accenture is a global management consulting company that has firmly established itself in the Fortune 500 list of companies. It was in 394th position in 2007 and has steadily gained since then in stature and prominence in the global competitive arena as it became a force to reckon with in the field of technology and outsourcing services. This company has a rather checkered past as in its earlier incarnation, Anderson Consulting, it got inextricably smeared in black as the Enron scandal unfolded with all its murkiness and deceit. So before the company went for initial public offering in 2001 it had changed its name to Accenture to get rid of an unenviable past association. This company is an acclaimed global s ervice provider having a highly decentralized organization structure and services clients of international repute and global footprint in areas of increasing productivity, turnover or returns on capital employed. In order to serve a worldwide client base the company had no other option but to decentralize its operations and that is evident when one comes to know that it operates from more than 150 locations in about 50 countries. The company, like most other service providers, values its human resources as its most productive asset and goes to great lengths to maintain it properly. With more and more companies investing heavily in Information Technology to cut costs and increase productivity, one of the core businesses of Accenture has become IT consulting. This is a highly competitive market and the only way to survive and stay ahead of competition is to continuously innovate and provide cutting edge solution to clients especially with competitors as Cap Gemini SA and Atos Origin h eavily breathing down Accenture’s neck. Accenture has also built corporate alliances with other leaders as SAP and Oracle and also formed a joint