Applied Corporate Finance and Financial Strategy
Case Study: Cisco
In a move that will grow its software footprint, Cisco CSCO (Links to an external site.) paid nearly $2 billion for BroadSoft BSFT (Links to an external site.) in 2017, a company that sells cloud-based call control software, a product that is often re-labelled and sold by traditional telephone companies to their customers. This acquisition is what IT vendors dub “the future of work,” as it uses technology meant to make it easier for workgroups to communicate with each other.
Suppose you were a newly appointed chief financial manager at Cisco, you are tasked to evaluate the acquisition of BroadSoft four years ago and its current position in order to set up its financial strategies for 2022-23.
In your report to the board of director, you are to provide detailed analyses in the following areas:
1. Evaluation of the deal performance of BroadSoft acquisition and its impact on the firm performance
2. Identify the financial strategies for the acquisition and discuss issues and challenges in cross-border investments
3. Critically evaluate the corporate strategies
4. Critical analysis of the current financial strategies of Cisco and make recommendation to set up its financial strategy for 2022-23
5. Other important areas as you identify
Financial information can be obtained from the OSIRIS (Links to an external site.) via Bloomberg, annual reports, official company website or other professional resources. It would be better to obtain the five most recent years’ information as this will make your analysis more relevant. Good work will provide critical analyses rather than provide some general discussion without in-depth analysis.
Appendix shall include supporting information to help the senior management team evaluation the performance of the company. Please create your own small tables, diagrams, and charts in your analysis and present professionally. DO NOT copy and paste annual report in the appendix.
Marking criteria:
1. The level of content analyses of the takeover performance, the impact on firm performance, financial strategies for the acquisition, issues, and challenges as well as financial strategy analyses and recommendation for future financial strategy (80%)
2. The quality of the references using Harvard Reference Guide (10%)
3. Clarity and coherence discussion throughout the case study, professional presentation and use of professional language (10%)
Assignment submission guidance:
1. You should adhere to the 3,000 word limitation. The actual word count excludes tables, charts, graphs, formulas, appendices and reference list. In sum, the word count refers only to the narratives from introduction to conclusion. Table can be used to present numbers and some brief points. Any misuse of tables with aims to avoid word limit will be subject to penalty. There is ±10% tolerance on word limit, but in worse scenarios of deliberately using tables to avoid word limit could lead to more penalty. There will be a 10% penalty if the assignment is too short. Please indicate the word count on the Front Sheet.
2. The formatting must follow Harvard Referencing guideline (6th Edition) for both the construction of the reference list and the proper in-text citation formats – pay attention to §3.1 in particular.
3. You should provide an extensive list of references comprising a combination of: academic journal articles, textbooks, good quality periodicals such as FT or WSJ or The Economist, etc. Good quality websites will be helpful, but please refrain from using Wikipedia or Investopedia heavily in your work.
4. You should use either Arial or Times New Roman 12 font sizes and use double spacing throughout. Use `justified’ margin whenever possible and centre all graphs, charts, figures, tables, etc. You shall create your own small tables, rather than copying annual report for example.
