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P4: Difference Between Financial and Advanced Financial Management

In: Business and Management

Submitted By ASquare
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Paper P4 is the advanced financial MANAGEMENT paper at the Professional level. It follows on from Paper F9 at the Fundamentals level. As throughout the ACCA syllabus, the Fundamentals paper covers the main technical areas that all accountants are required to master, whereas the Professional paper builds on that knowledge and explores advanced skills and techniques.
In particular Paper P4 expects candidates to have more depth of knowledge, better analytical skills, and to be able to exercise greater professional judgement than at Paper F9. Hence, instead of being asked to value a bond, a potential Paper F9 question, candidates will need to be able to recognise the need to calculate a bond value given the scenario. For instance candidates may be required to evaluate the potential gain to the shareholders of a target company, of various offers from a predator company. If one of these offers includes bonds then the value of the bonds will need to be calculated, unless of course it is given in the question.
Another key distinction between Paper F9 and Paper P4 is that in general the scenarios that candidates will be faced with will refer to larger, more complex and more international organisations. A calculative example of this is the need to be able to appraise projects carried out overseas whereas a discursive example is the need to be able to discuss the role of key international organisations such as the International Monetary Fund.
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WHAT IS THE KEY KNOWLEDGE I NEED TO BRING FORWARD FROM PAPER F9 AND HOW MUST I DEVELOP MY KNOWLEDGE FOR PAPER P4?
In this section I will consider each of the key topics within Paper F9 and give some thoughts on what remains crucial and how it is developed further in Paper P4. Given the constraints of this article please do not consider this list to be exhaustive.

THE FINANCIAL

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