It's an annual back-to-school routine. One morning you wave goodbye, and that【56】evening you' re burning the late-night oil in sympathy. In the race to improve educational standards,【57】are throwing t

第1题

In 2018, regardless of tariffs imposed by the Trump administration, China’s annual trade surplus reached a record of （) billion.

A.0.32

B.3.32

C.32.32

D.323.32

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第2题

An annual report of a company provides information about its business performance for certain people. These people include the investors, potential investors and other stakeholders. From the report, people can understand the company’s business scope, recent situation and future development. The main parts of an annual report usually include chairman’s letter, financial statements and operation analysis.

● Chairman’s Letter

Usually, an annual report should contain a letter from the chairman. The letter should provide details about the successes and the challenges of the past year. It should also include the future outlook for the company.

● Operation Analysis

The operation analysis is an overview of the business in the past year. It usually includes new hires and new product introductions. At the same time, it will introduce business acquisitions and other important issues.

● Financial Statements

The financial statements are very important for an annual report. People can know the company’s performance in the past from the statements. It usually consists of the following three aspects. The first one is the profit and loss statement. The second one is the balance sheet. And the third one is the cash flow statement.

1. An annual report of a company provides some information about its business performance for certain people. ()

2. People can know everything of the company from the annual report. ()

3. An annual report usually includes chairman’s letter, financial statements and operation analysis. ()

4. A chairman’s letter should include the strategic direction moving forward. ()

5. This passage is mainly about the main parts of an annual report. ()

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第3题

The writer’s attitude towards the annual l2-billion．d011ar business of wedding appears to

be __________．

A.positive

B.negative

C.indifferent

D.obiective

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第4题

From 1732 to 1758, Benjamin Franklin wrote and published his famous __________ ,an annual collection of proverbs.

A. The Autobiography

B. Poor Richard's Almanac

C. Common Sense

D. The General Magazine

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第5题

It s been a（n) ___________ tradition ever since. People celebrate it every year.

A、annual

B、delicious

C、crowded

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第6题

A company has issued non－callable, non－convertible preferred stock with the following feat

A company has issued non-callable, non-convertible preferred stock with the following features:

· Par value per share: $10

· Annual dividend per share: $2

· Maturity: 15 years

An investor’s required rate of return is 8%, and the current market price per share of the preferred stock is $25. By comparing the estimated intrinsic value with the market price of the preferred stock, the most likely conclusion is that the preferred stock is:

A.fairly valued at $25.00.

B.undervalued by $15.00.

C.overvalued by $4.73.

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第7题

It's an annual back-to-school routine. One morning you wave goodbye, and that （21) evening

It's an annual back-to-school routine. One morning you wave goodbye, and that (21) evening you're burning the mid-night oil in sympathy. In the race to improve educational standards, (22) are throwing the books at kids. (23) elementary school students are complaining of homework fatigue. What's a well-meaning parent to do？

As hard as (24) may be, sit back and chill experts advise. Though you've got to get them to do it, (25) helping too much, or even examining answers too carefully, you may keep them (26) doing it by themselves. "! wouldn't advise a parent to check every 27 assignment," says psychologist John Rosemond, author of Ending the Tough Homework, "There's a (28) of appreciation for trial and error. Let your children (29) the grade they deserve."

Many experts believe parents should gently look over the work of younger children and ask them to rethink their (30) . But "you don't want them to feel it has to be (31) ," she says.

That's not to say parents should (32) homework—first, they should monitor how much homework their kids have. Thirty minutes a day in the early elementary years and an hour in (33) four, five, and six is standard, says Rosemond. For junior-high students it should be" (34) more than a hour and a half," and two for high school students. If your child consistently has more homework than this, you may want to check (35) other parents and then talk to the teacher about reducing assignments.

21.

A. very

B. exact

C. right

D. usual

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第8题

Section B – TWO questions ONLY to be attempted Bluefin School （Bluefin) is a school for 12

Section B – TWO questions ONLY to be attempted

Bluefin School (Bluefin) is a school for 12 to 17-year-old pupils. It currently has 1,000 pupils attending drawn from its local area. The school is run by an executive group comprising the head of school and two deputy head teachers. This group reports to a board of governors who are part-time and selected from the local community and parents. The school is wholly funded by the government.

The school’s ethos is ‘to promote learning, citizenship and self-confidence among the pupils. This is developed from a consensus, led by the board of governors and the head of school and informed by the views of the pupils’ parents.’

The school information systems are highly decentralised. Each department keeps its own records on a stand-alone PC using basic word processing and spreadsheet packages. The school’s administrative department has a small network in its own offices with compatible applications and also a database and financial recording and reporting package for use in schools (provided by the government).

The school is broken down into 11 academic departments such as mathematics, science and history. Each department head must prepare information for reporting to the board by inputting and processing the data. They obtain some help from an administrator who visits each department to spend a few hours per week helping in the recording and preparation of the departmental information. The department heads have different approaches to reporting their performance, with some using average marks in the annual exams for each class and some using pass rates of the annual exams. Some department heads present graphs of their data while most use tables of figures.

The information is passed from each department to the school administration office on a memory stick (USB flash drive). The school administration office prints out the information for each department and adds it to a financial report creating a governors’ pack of usually about 13 pages for the annual review board meeting. The financial report is a detailed income and expenditure statement for the period under review (usually a two page print-out from the reporting package). An example of one of the 11 departments’ report is given in the Appendix.

The board of governors meets every quarter and reviews the governors’ pack once a year. The board are concerned that the information that they are receiving is not meeting their needs and that there are a number of problems with the control and security of some of the data.

It has been suggested that the school should consider improving its information systems by installing a network across the school to link the departmental computers and the administration department. A single database would be created to store all the performance information. The computers would then be linked to the internet in order to facilitate data transfer to other schools in the region and to the government.

Appendix

Bluefin School

Mathematics department

Section B – TWO questions ONLY to be attempted Blu

Notes:

Each year contains pupils of the same age.

Annual national exams are set in years 4, 5 and 6.

Each year group is divided into different classes in order to ensure that classes do not exceed 35 pupils.

(Not all pupils take every subject each year.)

Average marks are for the annual examinations.

Required:

(a) With reference to the current situation at Bluefin School, discuss the controls and security procedures that are necessary for management information. (9 marks)

(b) Using the limited information available, evaluate the usefulness of the pack that is provided to the board of governors. (6 marks)

(c) Evaluate the improvements suggested to the information systems at Bluefin. (5 marks)

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第9题

Section A – This ONE question is compulsory and MUST be attemptedCocoa－Mocha－Chai （CMC) Co

Section A – This ONE question is compulsory and MUST be attempted

Cocoa-Mocha-Chai (CMC) Co is a large listed company based in Switzerland and uses Swiss Francs as its currency. It imports tea, coffee and cocoa from countries around the world, and sells its blended products to supermarkets and large retailers worldwide. The company has production facilities located in two European ports where raw materials are brought for processing, and from where finished products are shipped out. All raw material purchases are paid for in US dollars (US$), while all sales are invoiced in Swiss Francs (CHF).

Until recently CMC Co had no intention of hedging its foreign currency exposures, interest rate exposures or commodity price fluctuations, and stated this intent in its annual report. However, after consultations with senior and middle managers, the company’s new Board of Directors (BoD) has been reviewing its risk management and operations strategies.

The following two proposals have been put forward by the BoD for further consideration:

Proposal one

Setting up a treasury function to manage the foreign currency and interest rate exposures (but not commodity price fluctuations) using derivative products. The treasury function would be headed by the finance director. The purchasing director, who initiated the idea of having a treasury function, was of the opinion that this would enable her management team to make better decisions. The finance director also supported the idea as he felt this would increase his influence on the BoD and strengthen his case for an increase in his remuneration.

In order to assist in the further consideration of this proposal, the BoD wants you to use the following upcoming foreign currency and interest rate exposures to demonstrate how they would be managed by the treasury function:

(i) a payment of US$5,060,000 which is due in four months’ time; and

(ii) a four-year CHF60,000,000 loan taken out to part-fund the setting up of four branches (see proposal two below). Interest will be payable on the loan at a fixed annual rate of 2·2% or a floating annual rate based on the yield curve rate plus 0·40%. The loan’s principal amount will be repayable in full at the end of the fourth year.

Proposal two

This proposal suggested setting up four new branches in four different countries. Each branch would have its own production facilities and sales teams. As a consequence of this, one of the two European-based production facilities will be closed. Initial cost-benefit analysis indicated that this would reduce costs related to production, distribution and logistics, as these branches would be closer to the sources of raw materials and also to the customers. The operations and sales directors supported the proposal, as in addition to above, this would enable sales and marketing teams in the branches to respond to any changes in nearby markets more quickly. The branches would be controlled and staffed by the local population in those countries. However, some members of the BoD expressed concern that such a move would create agency issues between CMC Co’s central management and the management controlling the branches. They suggested mitigation strategies would need to be established to minimise these issues.

Response from the non-executive directors

When the proposals were put to the non-executive directors, they indicated that they were broadly supportive of the second proposal if the financial benefits outweigh the costs of setting up and running the four branches. However, they felt that they could not support the first proposal, as this would reduce shareholder value because the costs related to undertaking the proposal are likely to outweigh the benefits.

Additional information relating to proposal one

The current spot rate is US$1·0635 per CHF1. The current annual inflation rate in the USA is three times higher than Switzerland.

The following derivative products are available to CMC Co to manage the exposures of the US$ payment and the interest on the loan:

Exchange-traded currency futures

Contract size CHF125,000 price quotation: US$ per CHF1

Section A – This ONE question is compulsory and MU

It can be assumed that futures and option contracts expire at the end of the month and transaction costs related to these can be ignored.

Over-the-counter products

In addition to the exchange-traded products, Pecunia Bank is willing to offer the following over-the-counter derivative products to CMC Co:

(i) A forward rate between the US$ and the CHF of US$ 1·0677 per CHF1.

(ii) An interest rate swap contract with a counterparty, where the counterparty can borrow at an annual floating rate based on the yield curve rate plus 0·8% or an annual fixed rate of 3·8%. Pecunia Bank would charge a fee of 20 basis points each to act as the intermediary of the swap. Both parties will benefit equally from the swap contract.

Required:

(a) Advise CMC Co on an appropriate hedging strategy to manage the foreign exchange exposure of the US$ payment in four months’ time. Show all relevant calculations, including the number of contracts bought or sold in the exchange-traded derivative markets. (15 marks)

(b) Demonstrate how CMC Co could benefit from the swap offered by Pecunia Bank. (6 marks)

(c) As an alternative to paying the principal on the loan as one lump sum at the end of the fourth year, CMC Co could pay off the loan in equal annual amounts over the four years similar to an annuity. In this case, an annual interest rate of 2% would be payable, which is the same as the loan’s gross redemption yield (yield to maturity).

Required: Calculate the modified duration of the loan if it is repaid in equal amounts and explain how duration can be used to measure the sensitivity of the loan to changes in interest rates. (7 marks)

(d) Prepare a memorandum for the Board of Directors (BoD) of CMC Co which:

(i) Discusses proposal one in light of the concerns raised by the non-executive directors; and (9 marks)

(ii) Discusses the agency issues related to proposal two and how these can be mitigated. (9 marks)

Professional marks will be awarded in part (d) for the presentation, structure, logical flow and clarity of the memorandum. (4 marks)

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第10题

The industrial societies have been extremely productive during the last two centuries. The

economic advance has been remarkable. During this relatively short period of time, greater changes in people's living conditions have occurred than in the thousands of years which preceded.

During the past 200 years the world population has increased 6 times, the annual world output has increased 80 times, and the distance a person can travel has gone up 1,000 times. There has also been much recent progress in art, culture, learning, and science. Such changes have led to a high rate of production and growth of the economy.

Economists fear that within the next 100 to 150 years, the earth's resources will become very scarce. Their fears are partly justified, but we should not be afraid. Industrial civilization adapts to new knowledge. By advancing knowledge, we not only create new forms of resources, but we also find ways to economize their use. Advanced modern knowledge can feed the hungry people of the world and improve their standard of living.

The figures in the second paragraph are used for the following purposes EXCEPT______.

A．prediction.

B．contrast.

C．definition.

D．explanation.

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第11题

Milk has become a popular drink for modem Chinese, not only is its nutritional（营养的) val

Milk has become a popular drink for modem Chinese, not only is its nutritional(营养的) value appreciated, it seems even to have taken the role making the whole nation strong. Milk industry has only about 180 years of history among the Hah people. For a long time, milk was considered a luxury(奢侈的) drink by common people. A widespread saying in the country was that Japan used a cup of milk to strengthen the constitution(体格) of its people. That sounds reasonable because the rich "Ca" in milk definitely benefits the constitution.

The average annual consumption per capita in Japan has risen from less than 10 kilograms immediately after World War II to 68 kilograms today. The average height of Japanese has increased by 11 centimeters during this period. The Chinese Government also hopes to improve the constitution of local people, and since milk is the most obvious nutritious food, it has naturally been picked up. But due to tradition, Chinese people are not in the habit of drinking milk regularly. The annual output of milk in the country is about 10 million tons, compared with an output of alcohol reaching 8 million tons. The annual milk consumption per capita is about 7 kilograms in China while the world's average is about 100 kilograms. The government has noticed the huge gap and plans to raise consumption to 10 kilograms per capita by 2005 and 16 kilograms by 2010. The government has also started plans for "school milk" since the beginning of this century.

Chinese government encourage people to drink milk and hope that ______.

A．the whole nation will become stronger

B．the milk industry will have a faster development

C．milk will no longer be considered a luxury drink

D．its nutritional value will be more appreciated

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