Reference no: EM132420537

25742 Financial Management - University of Technology Sydney

Financial News Report

You have recently been appointed to the position of Operational Risk Manager at Gringotts Financial Services. One of your tasks is to give a short presentation on current operational risk issues at the monthly executive team meetings. This will give you exposure to the CEO and the other executives who run the company, so it could make or break your career. The next meeting is on Friday, 6 September 2019, and it will be your first. You are already getting nervous!

You have chosen to present on two topics:

1. The recent Royal Commission has created a heightened awareness of the risks associated with ethical misconduct in the financial services industry. In the first part of your presentation, you plan to analyse an ethical issue that has recently been reported in the financial press. Your objective is to demonstrate a prescriptive approach to ethical decision-making to the executives, which will help them recognise and correct ethical breaches in their own departments.

2. The objective of the second part of your presentation is more ambitious. Gringotts is currently one of the few listed Australian companies that does not publish an annual corporate sustainability report. Since sustainability reporting is voluntary and none of the executive team members is keen on bureaucracy, it will be hard to convince them that Gringotts should report on its sustainability initiatives. But you think there are good reasons for doing so, and want to convince them to see it your way.

Instructions

- Replace Presenter Name with your name on the title slide of the Powerpoint slide deck Executive Risk Briefing.pptx.
- The next 4 slides (i.e. slides 2-5), entitled Corporate Ethics News, should contain your analysis of a news report in the financial press covering an ethical issue.
- The 4 slides after that (i.e. slides 6-9), entitled Corporate Sustainability Reporting, should lay out the case for why Gringotts Financial Services should publish an annual corporate sustainability report.
- The final slide (i.e. slide 10), entitled References, should cite all the sources you have used.
- You may not change the structure of the slide deck in any way.
o You may change nothing on the title slide other than your name.
o You may not change the number of slides.
o You may not change the font or font size of the slides.
o You may not change the margins on the slides.

- Your entire presentation should fit into the allotted 8 slides (4 slides for the ethics analysis and 4 slides for the corporate sustainability argument) plus 1 slide for the references.
o You only have a 5-minute slot at the meeting, so be brief and on-point.
o Express your ideas in information-rich bullet points that can be scanned quickly by the reader (don't write sentences).

Corporate Ethics News

- This section of your presentation should be based on a news article from the financial press (e.g. the Australian Financial Review or the Financial Times) over the period 5 August-6 September.
- The news article you choose should highlight an ethical issue faced by an Australian or foreign company.
- Your analysis of the issue should follow the first 5 steps in the prescriptive approach outlined by Trevino and Nelson.
- Make sure to reference your news article properly in the References slide (see https://bit.ly/2M0em3I).
Corporate Sustainability Reporting
- This section of your presentation should do at least four things:
o Describe a corporate sustainability report and explain its purpose.
o Provide examples of the items in a corporate sustainability report.
o Explain the benefits of publishing a corporate sustainability report.
o Highlight the important issues in corporate sustainability reporting.
- You will find some reference material (e.g. academic papers and industry reports) on sustainability reporting in the folder for this assignment, but you may use any reference material you like.
- Remember to properly reference all the sources you use in the References slide.