investing in equities

Project description
You work as the Finance Manager for a company who are considering investing some of their surplus funds in AstraZeneca plc.

You have been asked to investigate the feasibility of this investment and produce a report for the board members on your findings.

A formal short report style is required of no more than 1000 words (excluding graphs and calculations) and should include the following data and analysis:

1.The Dividend History tables for the last five years with analysis.
2.The share price movement from the financial press with analysis.
3.Investment ratios including Gearing and ROCE with full analysis.
4.Research on relevant news items and analysis on this.
5.Research interest rates for alternative investment such as an ISA or a Bond (do only one of these) and analyse whether this would be a better investment.
Instructions

?Formal short report style is required with appropriate sections.
?You must include all empirical evidence(tables and graphs etc.). These should be presented in the main body of your report.
?If you calculate your own ratios you should also include the company accounts and your calculations. These must be presented as an appendix.

All data should be numbered as Table, Figure or Appendix and referenced where appropriate. For example:
Table 1.1

Source: Tesco Annual Report 2011

You then make reference to the data in your report. Examples:
?Table 1.1 shows that share prices rose€¦
?Share prices rose€¦ (Table 1.1)
Any web sites, texts, articles etc. that you use must be Harvard referenced as usual.

The report should be no more than 1000 words, excluding figure work.