I study how the properties of management earnings forecasts change after a firm merges with or acquires another company. I find management is more likely to issue a forecast in a merger or an acquisition firm-year than in a non-M&A firm-year. Compared to forecasts issued by the firm in non-M&A periods, the first forecast issued after completing an M&A deal is less likely to be bundled with an earnings announcement and the forecast range is wider, although more likely to be optimistic than non-M&A forecasts. I find the increase in forecast range width and optimism persist in forecasts issued up to the end of the fiscal year but are not present in the initial forecast issued in the subsequent year. Finally, I find variation in M&A experience and M&A type influence management earnings forecast properties. Because prior studies of management forecasts often delete observations containing mergers and acquisitions or simply include the firm’s market-to-book, my study informs researchers about how the properties of management forecasts are impacted by the uncertainty from a merger or an acquisition.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Oregon, 2007. / Typescript. Includes vita and abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 171-178). Also available online in Scholars' Bank; and in ProQuest, free to University of Oregon users.

Thesis (MBA)--Stellenbosch University, 2003. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: This study is focussed on the all-important issue of estimation and forecasting in project management. Most project managers relate the kind of difficulties they have to go through in dealing with superiors that come up with a targeted deadline for a project with a given budget but with little or no regard to due process of arriving at both duration and cost. Many projects are doomed to overrun both schedule and cost from the word go because either the project manager is not equipped to give accurate estimates or is too timid to upset the boss by saying they do not believe the project would be completed within the said duration and the given cost without compromising quality. It is well said in literature that the three pillars of any project completion are time, cost and performance. Two of the three can be predetermined and the third will normally be dependent on those two. Where there is generous time and a large budget, chances are that a good quality well considered and executed project will result. The opposite is also true. This study investigates literature on the subject and also seeks to look at the trends in estimating in practice, by way of questionnaire and physical inspections. The questions that it seeks to answer are: a) Are project managers in most companies formally qualified? b) What is their disposition to using computerised/statistical methods in estimating? c) Does the level of education affect the disposition of project managers to using computerised/statistical methods of estimation? And finally, d) What methods are project managers using to estimate duration, cost and schedule? The results of this survey show that most projects managers do not have formal training in project management. At best they have attended short courses in project management. The survey also shows that even the formally educated project managers do not think much of strictly scientific (computerised/statistical) methods of project estimation. They rather feel that getting input from experienced functional people on the separate parts of the project tends to produce more accurate estimates. There is a leaning therefore towards using past experience on similar projects to generate norms and expert advice from the relevant functions on the expected costs and durations of accomplishing the parts of the project on which they have experience. All the project managers that responded to the survey said they had formal documentation for their projects and that they kept copies of the documentation in a central place that was easily accessible. Physical checks of this fact revealed that 29% of the interviewees did not have central or well-kept databases of previous projects' information. / AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Die studie plaas klem op die belangrike kwessie van skatting en voorspelling in projekbestuur. Die meeste projekbestuurders ondervind die tipiese probleem waar senior persone projekteikendatums en -begrotings neerlê, sonder behoorlike oorweging van die faktore wat tyd en koste beïnvloed. Baie projekte is dus, van die staanspoor, bestem om beide koste en tyd te oorskry. Die projekbestuurder is dalk nie behoorlik toegerus om akkurate skattings te maak nie, of andersinds ontbreek die moed om die senior persoon daarop te wys dat tydskaal- en koste-teikens slegs teen 'n verlaging in kwaliteitstandaarde bereik kan word. Die literatuur gee wye erkenning aan wat die die drie pilare van projekvoltooing is: tyd, koste, en prestasie. Twee hiervan kan vooraf vasgepen word, terwyl die oorblywende een dan 'n funksie van die ander twee word. Indien daar ruim tyd en fondse beskikbaar is, is daar 'n beter kans om goeie kwaliteit en 'n gunstige projekuitkoms te verseker. Die teenoorgestelde is ook waar. Hierdie studie ondersoek die literatuur in die vakgebied, en gee bepaalde aandag aan die tendense in vooruitskattingspraktyke deur van 'n vraeboog en fisiese ondersoeke gebruik te maak. Die vrae wat deur hierdie navorsing gestel word, is die volgende: a) Is projekbestuurders, in die meeste organisasies, formeelopgelei? b) Wat is hulle houding teenoor die gebruik van rekenaargebaseerde statistiese metodes vir vooruitskatting? c) Beïnvloed die vlak van opleiding hierdie houding teenoor die gebruik rekenaargebaseerde statistiese metodes? d) Watter metodes gebruik projekbestuurders om kostes, tyd, en skedules te bepaal? Die ondersoek bevind dat die meerderheid projekbestuurders nie formele opleiding in projekbestuur het nie. Ten beste het hulle slegs kort kursusse in projekbestuur bygewoon. Die studie bevind ook verder dat selfs formeel opgeleide projekbestuurders nie ten gunste van streng wetenskaplike (rekenaargebaseerde statistiese) skattingstegnieke is nie. Hulle voel dat die insette van ervare funksionele personeel wat op verskillende elemente van die projek werk, meer akkuraat is. Daar is dus 'n neiging om eerder vorige ondervinding op soortgelyke projekte te gebruik om norme vas te stel, en om kundige spesialiste se raad te gebruik by die skatting van koste en tydsduur met betrekking tot die gedeeltes van die projek waarin hulle spesialiseer. AI die projekbestuurders wat aan die vraeboog-opname deelgeneem het, het bevestig dat hulle formele dokumentasie rakende hulle projekte byhou, en dat kopieë op In toeganklike plek sentraal beskikbaar gehou word. Die fisiese ondersoek bevind dat 29% van die persone waarmee onderhoude gevoer is, nie projekrekords van vorige projekte op In sentrale databasis bewaar nie.

IT projects are temporary organizations of strategic importance. Companies invest large amounts of money, time, and resources into business-embedded IT projects in order to change and gain a competitive advantage. Extreme cases of failures were previously only analyzed as case studies, e.g., Denver Airport, London Stock Exchange Taurus, London Ambulance Service. The research poses an important question: What is the risk of these outliers, that is markedly deviant observations of IT project performance? What causes outliers in IT project performance? Only very few studies problematized the frequency of outliers directly. Reported numbers range from 33% to as low as 0.2%. The variation has been explained through biases in planning processes of organizations and as artefact of data collection. An alternative explanation is that the true nature of IT projects contains more variation than commonly assumed. A rich body of organizational, project management, and IT project management literature offers antecedents of outliers. The extant literature falls broadly into three schools of thought: (1) system-centric, (2) event-centric, and (3) process-centric theories of why outliers occurred. System-centric explanations focus on the question of system design, based on theories of normal accidents and high reliability organizations. Event-centric explanations focus on how organizations respond to rare events that impact the organization, based on theories of crisis management, management of organizational turbulence, and strategic surprises. Process-centric explanations focus on the role of managing uncertainty and risk over time, based on theories of man-made disasters, escalation of commitment to a failing course of action, and the normalization of deviance. The study is based on the archival research of 4,307 IT projects from 190 organizations. The findings show that the tail of the cost, schedule, and effort performance distributions is best fitted by a power law, with overwhelming goodness of fit. Moreover, the findings show that system-centric explanations and process-centric theories offer explanations for the thickness of the tail and the odds of an outlier occurring. In particular five variables were associated with outliers: estimated cost and duration, perceived uniqueness of the project, the qualification and motivation of the project team, and the effectiveness of monitoring and controlling. The results show that outliers are not chance events; they follow patterns that are describable. The study showed how design factors, that are often conceptualized as system complexities, and execution factors, that are often conceptualized as the effectiveness of project processes, explain project outliers. Lastly, the thesis draws implications for research and practice.

M.Com. (Financial Economics) / This study investigates the best measure of extreme losses in the South African equity derivatives market, and applies this to estimate the size of a default fund for Safcom, the central counterparty (CCP) for exchange-traded derivatives in South Africa. The predictive abilities of historic simulation Value at Risk (VaR), Conditional VaR (CVaR), Extreme VaR (EVaR) calculated using a Generalised Extreme Value (GEV) distribution and stress testing are compared during historic periods of stress in this market. The iterative cumulative sum of squares (ICSS) algorithm of Inclan and Tiao (1994) is applied to identify significant and large, positive shifts in the volatility of returns, thus indicating the start of a stress period. The FTSE/JSE Top 40 Index Future (known as the ALSI future) is used as a proxy for this market. Two key periods of stress are identified, namely the 1997 Asian crisis and the 2008 global financial crisis. The maximum daily losses in the ALSI during these stress periods were observed on 28 October 1997 and 6 October 2008. For the VaR-based loss estimates, 2500 trading days’ returns up to 28 October 1997 and 2750 trading days’ returns up to 6 October 2008 is used. The study finds that Extreme VaR predicts extreme losses during these two historic periods of stress the most accurately and is consequently applied to the quantification of a default fund for Safcom, using 2500 daily returns from 5 June 2003 to 31 May 2013. The EVaR-based estimation of a default fund shows that the current Safcom default fund is sufficient to provide for market losses equivalent to what was suffered during the 2008 global financial crisis, but not sufficient for the magnitude of losses suffered during the 1997 Asian crisis.

I investigate the effects of requiring the audit engagement partner (EP) signature and individual EP’s quality on information asymmetry, analysts’ forecast errors and forecast dispersion. I predict and find that, ceteris paribus, there is a significant decline in information asymmetry, analysts’ forecast errors and forecast dispersion from the pre- to post-EP signature period in the UK over both of short-term (e.g., 2008-2010) and long-term (e.g., 2004-2014). These findings hold when using a control sample approach and a different proxy for the information asymmetry, which indicate that my results are not likely due to the effect of concurrent events and correlated omitted variables. These findings provide timely and important empirical evidence to the ongoing debate about whether the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board should pass a similar requirement in the U.S. / Includes bibliography. / Dissertation (Ph.D.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2016. / FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection