FINANCE

  

The Situation: You are working for a publicly traded international trade company, and you need some money to complete a transaction or contract. You will need to make a presentation to a potential investor, in this case a bank or Investor. The transaction could be to open a new office, acquire a company, make an export sale transaction, or other potential business opportunity.

Choice: I want to export a franchise of Starbucks coffee shop to the Democratic Republic of Congo.

 For this part, you will be preparing a ONE page Briefing Note of your financing proposal 

Submit a written briefing note to educate about this company. 

Important Requirements:

The submission must not exceed one page. 

 May include no more than 2 appendices which must not exceed one page (for greater clarity, one page per appendix, meaning the document package should be a maximum of 3 pages). 

If you are going to use appendices, they better directly tie into the information you present in the briefing note 

The company Description must represent that you understand how the company creates value, how they compare against competition, and to show and elucidate to me that you understand this business.

To help you frame up your thinking, consider the following ideas:

Your proposal will contain the following information as content that you need to convey through the briefing memo style:

1.  X,Y,Z briefing information and superbly brief summary of company (no more than 3 lines, and this can be bundled into how you introduce the issue)

2. Description of Opportunity (should be in the issue description these 2 points should make up no more than 10-15% of the total space of the paper)

3. Company Capabilities (financial and operational capability with respect to the opportunity, oftentimes put in the Rationale section)

4. Key Risks & Mitigating Factors

5. Rationale for Investor (Explain & Summarize the key reasons why the investor/decision-maker should agree with your recommendation and proceed forward with the next steps. This is often called the benefits for the person / company)

6. KISS (which stands for Keep it Simple Summary) table at the end. For eg. Here is one that you might use when summarizing a credit request for a company involved in the sale of industrial equipment.

  

Financial Ask:

 

Term:

 

Proposed Interest Rate:

 

Country of Opportunity:

 

S&P Rating of Country   of Opportunity

In terms of Style:

Your proposal should have the following major headers and be structured as a briefing note:

Issue: Whats the companys problem which is being solved by your opportunity.  Eg. They are struggling with heavy fixed costs and tight global competition

Recommendation: This is your proposed solution. This is your opportunity. Eg. Build a plant in Vietnam with a lower fixed cost, and lower variable costs to reduce cost load, while also positioning company to respond to South East Asia demand an area of growth for the company.

Rationale: This is why your opportunity makes sense to solve the problem. This MUST include financial ratios / analysis to show that youre suggesting an opportunity which the company can actually execute on.

Alternatives: This is where you identify real alternatives to your proposed opportunity

Next Steps: This is where you will propose a financing structure / investment structure to accomplish your opportunity. You should include your KISS table at the end.