GE is planning to record a $6.2 billion charge for underestimating a liability for longterm care insurance policies sold years ago. How do you think this amount was estimated? What does the charge signify in terms of earnings, cash flows, the value of GE stock?
Dropbox is planning to IPO. Do you agree with the statement that public firms are perceived to be “more stable” than private firms? Why or why not? What do you think is meant by “stable”?
The new tax law reduces rates for corporations from 35% to 21%, yet many firms, especially banks, will be recording sizable losses in their 2017 4th quarters. Why?
How many factors that affect the DB pension funded ratio can you identify? What industries, do you think, have higher funded ratios? Why might that be the case?
If you were the founder of a company, what are the factors you would consider in deciding whether to IPO or direct list? Do you think more firms, like Spotify, will choose to direct list? Why or why not?
Tim Cook received $102 million in total compensation for the latest fiscal year. Is this about right? Too much? Too little? How would you determine what is the optimal amount and the optimal components of his pay?
How would you determine the optimal amount of debt and the appropriate amount of advisory service fee? What are factors other than the debt load that could lead a firm to file Chapter 11?
Is it enough to know excel? Do you share the author’s assessment that excel is not effective to handle the tasks mentioned? What database software do you know?
Apple, Microsoft, Google, et al. have cumulatively billions of unrepatriated foreign earnings/cash. If you were a policy maker, what would be the optimal rate of tax on those earnings to encourage repatriation? How would you decide on that rate?
So, the oil firms have fewer goodwill impairments due to rebounding oil prices. Are they allowed to reverse any of these impairments? Should they be allowed to do so? Why or why not?
Do you believe the new revenue recognition standard will meet Mr. Golden’s objective of giving investors “better information”? Why or why not?
If tax laws affect executive compensation in unexpected (and adverse) ways, why do you think special tax rules are imposed? If tax laws are changed again, can you make any predictions about how firms will react and change the way their execs are compensated?
For revenue recognized over time on long term construction contracts, what are the estimates that firms make? How do these estimates affect when and how much revenue and profit are recognized? Is there any reason why a firm would not want to divulge these estimates, or changes in these estimates?
Do you believe that GE’s stock price is affected by the fact that it uses multiple “pro forma” or non-GAAP earnings measures? Why or why not?
If you were an equity research analyst, how would disaggregating pension cost (expense) benefit your analysis? Specifically, how does isolating service cost in operating income and disaggregating the other components (interest, expected return, amortizations) make your analysis better/easier?
What do you expect to be the measurable financial benefits of changing the name of a company, such as Coach has done?
If you were CFO of Intel, what would you do? What are all your options and how would you try to make a decision about your $10 billion in overseas cash?
If the switch to a territorial tax system from the current worldwide system goes through, would firms that have deemed foreign earnings as indefinitely reinvested need to accrue a tax liability on those nonrepatriated earnings? If so, what would be the effect on the financials and the effective tax rate (ETR)?
Toys R US filed for Chapter 11. Could you have predicted this? What inputs to your predictive model would you have included?
If you were a policy maker, would you consider lowering corporate income tax rates in the U.S.? If so, by how much? Would you consider eliminating the corporate tax altogether and just tax individuals? Why or why not?
