Examine the accounting procedures. Study the notes. Talk to people in the same business.
beginners and advanced courses
13-14 November – beginners course
27-28 November – advanced course
Both courses will be held at the FTI Forensic Accounting offices, Holborn
cost
understanding company accounts – beginners : £350 full price or £250 – NUJ members
understanding company accounts – advanced : £350 full price or £250 – NUJ members
save
understanding company accounts – beginners and advanced : £500 full price (a saving of £200) or £400 NUJ members (a saving of £100)
book now
To reserve your place, please fill in the booking form and follow the instructions for payment.
These courses are for practising journalists only
When the American hedge fund manager and ace “short seller”, Jim Chanos, spotted the black holes in Enron’s accounts he set in motion the exposure of the fraud that brought down the company.
More recently, in Britain, we have seen a number of companies reporting problems that had been hidden in plain sight in their accounts. This year, shares in social housing services group Connaught crashed from 300p to 15p when black holes emerged in their accounts – threatening the existence of the company. Those holes were there to see. As were the previous black holes that sank training group Carter & Carter and IT software providers Isoft.
understanding company accounts for beginners – 13-14 November
This two-day intensive course with one of Britain’s top forensic accountants Raj Bairoliya from FTI Forensic Accounting will show you how to understand company accounts and get beyond the corporate PR spin. The emphasis will be on teaching practical skills rather than a series of lectures.
The first day will cover the theory and explain how to understand the profit and loss, balance sheet and cash flow statements plus those all important accounting policies such as revenue recognition – the key to unpicking many suspect accounts – and which notes to the accounts to focus on and why.
A simulated profit and loss account will be used to show the interaction between this and the balance sheet. The second day will give the opportunity to apply the knowledge from the first day to three case studies, where participants will work in small teams and identify pertinent issues. There will be plenty of opportunity for questions and discussion.
The objective of this course is to ensure that all participants feel comfortable with a set of accounts and know where and how to look for relevant information.
The only pre-requisites for this course are numeracy and an interest in financial matters as the theory will be taught on the first day and applied to real life examples on the second day.
At the end of the course you will not become as rich as Jim Chanos but you should be able to recognise a potential Enron or Connaught when you see one!
understanding company accounts advanced – 27-28 November
The advanced course will build on the beginners’ course with the aim of making the participants comfortable with a listed company’s accounts (which typically can run to over a hundred pages).
If the participants have not attended the beginners’ or a similar course, then it is important that they are already familiar and comfortable with a basic set of accounts – the profit and loss account, balance sheet, cash flow statement and the ideas behind the notes to those accounts. Participants should be familiar with some accounting terms such as EPS, PE ratio, depreciation, earnings management, share options and factors that drive management to manipulate their results.
The weekend will be based around a series of increasingly complex, real case studies and will require working in small groups. For each case study, the groups will identify core issues of journalistic interest in those accounts, identify the story and discuss how to justify/confirm it from the evidence in the accounts.
To the extent possible, the objective of this course is to equip a relatively small number of participants to comfortably handle relatively complex financial material and to provide a structured approach for tackling such material. Therefore, participants will have an opportunity to suggest any particular topics they would like covered before the course starts.
This will not make you an accountant but should equip you, as a journalist, to ask the right questions and assess the answers.
Note: This course is definitely NOT suitable for those who are not familiar with a basic set of accounts as this will not be covered.
comments from previous attendees
Thoroughly interesting, clear and informative.
Raj [Bairoliya] made accounts less daunting by speaking ‘normal’ English and translating the jargon.
Brought a rather dry topic to life and managed to sustain our interest and convey very useful skills.
book now
To reserve your place, please fill in the booking form and follow the instructions for payment.