Matching Items (3)
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- All Subjects: Investment Banking
- All Subjects: Occupational Fraud
- Creators: Orpurt, Steven
- Creators: Brawka, Rachel
- Creators: Dennis, Lauren Nicole
- Member of: Theses and Dissertations
Description
The main goal of this study was to understand the awareness of small business owners regarding occupational fraud, meaning fraud committed from within an organization. A survey/questionnaire was used to gather insight into the knowledge and perceptions of small business owners, while also obtaining information about the history of fraud and the internal controls within their business. Twenty-four owners of businesses with less than 100 employees participated in the study. The results suggest that small business owners overestimate their knowledge regarding internal controls and occupational fraud, while also underestimating the risk of fraud within their own business. In fact, 92% of participants were not at all familiar with the popular Internal Control \u2014 Integrated Framework published by the Committee of Sponsoring Organizations of the Treadway Commission. The results also show that small business owners tend to overestimate the protection provided by their currently implemented controls in regard to their risk of fraud. Overall, through continued knowledge of internal controls and occupational fraud, business owners can better protect their businesses from the risk of occupational fraud by increasing their awareness of fraud.
ContributorsDennis, Lauren Nicole (Author) / Orpurt, Steven (Thesis director) / Munshi, Perseus (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / Department of Information Systems (Contributor) / School of Accountancy (Contributor)
Created2014-05
Description
Financial distress and restructuring is a core component of the corporate finance advisor's arsenal and is needed in nearly all market conditions, whether recessionary or expansionary. Financial distress means that a company is in present or future danger of not being able to pay its financial obligations. There are many market indicators of distress which may include: debt trading significantly below face value, stock price trading at or below $1 per share, and implied negative shareholders' equity on the balance sheet. In order to remedy financial distress, the debtor and its creditors seek to hire investment banks specializing in financial restructuring to help fix the debtors's capital structure and possibly navigate through a bankruptcy process. Stephen Moyer describes financial restructuring as "the process of transforming a firm's capital structure to better fit the current and/or future circumstances of the firm" (53). The way that this is accomplished is reducing the debtor's liabilities in order to accurately reflect asset value. Liabilities may be adjusted in out-of-court restructuring agreements or in-court bankruptcy restructurings. The former is often quite difficult considering the hostile nature of the situation and competing interests but is preferred if possible. The latter is most common but also usually both lengthy and expensive. In most cases, the liabilities will be exchanged for new liabilities or equity, providing the creditors with some form of recovery, and leaving the debtor in a healthier position post-emergence. In order to put myself into the shoes of a financial restructuring advisor, I conducted a technical case study on Eastman-Kodak by recreating a financial model depicting possible returns to creditors and emergence from bankruptcy. This model is depicted within the thesis.
ContributorsEghlimi, Sean Cameron (Author) / Licon, Lawrence (Thesis director) / Orpurt, Steven (Committee member) / School of International Letters and Cultures (Contributor) / Department of Finance (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2018-12
Description
CDA - short for "Career Development Application" - is an iOS application that aims to help students who may not have inside connections on Wall Street break into the notoriously hard-to-enter investment banking industry. The application does this by asking the user a few questions about his or her characteristics, classifying him or her into different categories based on his or her response, then tailoring the information displayed to him or her based on his or her classifications. The information, compiled by my thesis partner, is stored in a cloud-based database system to facilitate easy content updates without having to recompile and resubmit the application to the App Store. Because the application shows information to its users based on certain characteristics of the users, such as grade level, previous experience in the industry, and the geographical region and prestigiousness of the school he or she attends, the application is more useful than simply showing the same information to every student regardless of his or her circumstances. While the current application presents useful information in a compact, easy-to-use format, there are still many improvements that could be made. The application could be more sensitive to minor mistakes made by the user trying to answer the classification questions, and it could present information in an even easier-to-use format. Still, the application as it stands could be extremely useful for helping students who are not the traditional "Wall Street types" to enter the competitive, prestigious investment banking industry.
ContributorsBrawka, Rachel (Author) / Balasooriya, Janaka (Thesis director) / Bennett, Jack (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / Computer Science and Engineering Program (Contributor)
Created2018-05