Question 1: Hoople Consultants has won a contract to provide engineering advice and support to a city in a developing country. The contract is funded by an international aid bank but is administered by the local officials. The Hoople team is led by Marcella. One day she is asked to go and see the manager of the local client team. The manager says that he and his deputy would like to go on a study tour of the UK so that they and their team can be in a better position to understand more about Hoople. The local manager points out to Marcella that they don’t have the funds to do this so they would like to pay for it through the project. The best way to do this would be for Marcella to pay for all the flights and accommodation and provide some money for meals etc. Marcella can invoice all this through the contract by enhancing the hours billed and the manager will approve it.
Applying the CFA ethical code and any other suitable framework, make a practical recommendation for Marcella.
Question 2: Peter is the treasurer of a FTSE listed company. He is phoned by Andrew from an investment bank where Peter has done some business with another division. Andrew invites Peter to go skiing for a weekend with other clients in Switzerland. There will be many useful contacts including direct competitors of Peter’s company. Peter doesn’t ski but can see the distinct business benefit.
How should he respond? Would your answer be different if the invitation came after a major piece of work had just been completed with Andrew’s team?
Question 3: Write a brief analysis of the following statement. Bullet points are acceptable:
“The LIBOR scandals at Barclays Bank (note plural) aren’t really scandals in that no one in the general public was affected. It was only traders dealing with each other. After all borrowers that had used swaps to fix rates they weren’t impacted.”