Corporate Governance and Risk Assessment: A Case Study of Wesfarmers

This assignment discusses the compliance of Wesfarmers with AGC Principle and the steps they followed for their overall accounting. It also highlights the importance of risk assessment and the specific steps that a company needs to follow. The subject is Corporate Governance and Risk Assessment.

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By student name
Professor
Date: 24 December, 2017.
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Executive Assessment
In this assignment the company that has been selected is Wesfarmers, and we shall discuss the
compliance of the company with regards to AGC Principle, and the steps that they followed for their
overall accounting. Risk assessment is a very important part of any organization and it is important to
understand the potential areas of risk which a company needs to validate in its system. There are
specific steps in relation to risk assessment that a company needs to follow to get the desired result. It
will help the company in the long run with less errors and fluctuations and better results.
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Contents
Introduction...........…………………………………………………………………..........…...3
Analysis.......................………………........................................................................................3
References...................................................................................................................................7
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Introduction
Wesfarmers is one of the largest retail conglomerates that have ventured into a variety of business
to provide best returns to the shareholders. The company is listed on the ASX, and has one of the largest
revenue making business in the world. It was founded in 1914 and is the top company in the world
today. The company is having its operations in many fields that include mining, finance, operations retail
business etc. The company is listed on the ASX and thus needs to function as per that. The company
needs to abide the corporate governance principles that the ASX has set up.
Analysis
Corporate Governance refers to the policy of giving it back to the society by keeping the needs of all
the shareholders in consideration along with it. It is one of the best policies that promote sustainable
development in all fields. It promotes the needs of the sustaining the needs of all the stakeholders that
the company is connected to (Pape, 2017). It also means promoting sustainability for the society in
which the company functions. It is very important that the company should keep the needs of all the
parties in mind. Wesfarmers have been fabulous in implementing the CSG principles –
 The company has a definite committee that has the responsibility of managing the affairs of
corporate sustainability for the company. The board of the directors and management have
been proper roles and responsibility to manage the affairs of the company with regards to the
Corporate Responsibility (Maynard, 2017).
 The Wesfarmers have proper audit done every year to make sure that the reports of the
company are true to their affairs and there are no issues regards to the same. The Audit is done
to ensure that all the actions are ethical and correct.
 All the matters related to this are properly established in the notes of the company and there is
proper disclosure with regards to the accounting principle and accounting policies. Proper notes
are required to given for proper disclosures to the investors of the company (Lubensky, 2017).
 The corporate integrity is enacted by the great internal control by the company. Safeguarding
the integrity of the financial reports is the responsibility of the directors and they should do it.
Proper controls should be established for proper risk assessment. This will help in removing any
kind of errors that might be present in the system of the company(Wesfarmers.com.au, 2018).
 The company gives fair amount of remuneration to all the people who work there. Being such a
give company with such a strong database, the remuneration needs to be fair so that people are
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satisfied with what they receive and there is less competition among the employees. There is no
biasness on part of the management in this regards and they ensure a fair approach.
The corporate governance statement can be found on the :
http://www.wesfarmers.com.au/docs/default-source/corporate-governance/2017-corporate-
governance-statement.pdf?sfvrsn=2
4) Risk assessment is an important plan for any vompany, it helps in understanding the risks that
the company might face that the company face. It is important that proper controls must be there
so that any kind of risk should be avoided and the company is able to achieve the correctness that
the company requires. Risk assessment should be done at intervals so that there is proper
upadtion with regards to it in recent times. It helps to find whether the financial statements are
materially correct or not and provides a true fair of the company results. There are various steps
of risk assessment that the company needs to follow.
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Retail market is a type of sector where the company will face various issues and thus it is
important to be sure that there are proper controls that can be beneficial to the company and help
them to face the competition in the market. In recent days we have seen that there has been great
development of the use of social media and hence it becomes important to understand that there
is a lot of risk that comes with it. The companies needs to adopt proper security measures that
will help them in maninatining the data integrity and will contribute in this regards.
In case of Wesfarmers the company has adopted specific measures like information
technology analytics, secured gateways, timely audit of the control system to ensure that there is
no risk associated with it and the company is safe and secured. The same can be deciphered
through various methods like balance sheet income statement analysis, calculation of specific
ratios, mainatnence of proper data banks and system enhancements that would help the company
in the long run in avoiding any kind of risk associated with data integrity and loss.
The company also focuses on specific audit procedures that would help in the log run to
ascertain the areas in which the company needs to improve and apply more control. It will also
help in keeping a check on the integrity of the employees and hence reduces malfunctionings and
data loss. Internal audit is a very good investment for any company and will help in sceuring the
system that the company use (Heuvel & Wagelman, 2017). It will also keep a check on the
management of the company and the other people who are associated with it. Few steps of
internal controls includes, segregation of duties different parties, having a sound information
system in place, having a sounc data management system for the company.Miantanece of proper
books of accounts is also beneficial for the company and can help the company for future
reference. In case the management faces any issues they can take help from experts who can help
them in management of their system in a better way. There is no guarantee that the risk will be
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vanished completely, but what the company can do is reduce the associated levels of risk so that
in future the success rate is not hampered and the company is able to grow in a secured
organization (Elimam, 2017).
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References
Elimam, H. (2017). The Role of Small Businesses (Small Scale Economic Projects) in Alleviating the Acuity
of Unemployment. International Business Research, 10(3).
Heuvel, W., & Wagelman, A. (2017). A note on “A multi-period profit maximizing model for retail supply
chain management”. European Journal of Operational Research, 260(2), 625-630.
Lubensky, D. (2017). A model of recommended retail prices. The RAND Journal of Economics, 48(2), 358-
386.
Maynard, J. (2017). Financial Accounting, Reporting, and Analysis (SECOND ed.). NewYork: Oxford
University Press.
Pape, T. (2017). Value of agreement in decision analysis: Concept, measures and application. Computers
& Operations Research, 80, 82-93.
Wesfarmers.com.au. (2018). [online] Available at: https://www.wesfarmers.com.au/docs/default-
source/default-document-library/2017-annual-report.pdf?sfvrsn=0 [Accessed 27 Apr. 2018].
Url : https://www.wesfarmers.com.au/docs/default-source/default-document-library/2017-annual-
report.pdf?sfvrsn=0
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