Interim Project Report
The purpose of this project report is to provide a comprehensive insight in to our chosen focus company, Ladbrokes PLC. We intend to analyse the company’s industrial sector, give a detailed account of its background, nature and operations, and present a thorough outline of the financial position of both Ladbrokes PLC and its competitor companies. In order to gather this data we had to work as a team and allocate different tasks amongst us, so that we could all focus on certain aspects of our focus company. Through our arranged meetings we were each able to relay the information we had obtained, and in turn, help each other to further establish an overall view of Ladbrokes PLC.
To collect this information, we had to use several means of research methods and resources. Although the internet is always a valuable source of information, we found that databases were the most helpful sources of research available to us, and so these were used extensively. Keynote, which is an archive of industrial sector reports, provided us with insightful competitor analysis overviews and information on the different aspects of the marketplace including the market leaders and financial results of a particular year. To ascertain financial data, we found that the use of FAME was of particular usefulness, as it gave very detailed reports of the company’s finances helping us to classify the profits and losses, cash flow, ratios, financial trends and changes amongst others. The Mintel database was also a valuable resource of this information. Searches of newspaper and journal archives in programs such as Lexis-Nexis and Infotrac supplied us with a good amount of knowledge on the background and history/happenings of Ladbrokes PLC.
In this report ...