Jeronimo Martins Group’s Consolidated Balance Sheet Essay

Jeronimo Martins Group’s Consolidated Balance Sheet as of 31 December 2011 and 31 December 2010, has been analyzed respectively the correspondents values, structure and relevant changes for assets and Liabilities & Shareholder’s Equity with following conclusions: I.The main assets of Jeronimo Martins Group are noncurrent (about 75%) concentrated mostly in tangible assets (about 50%) followed for the intangible assets (about 18%); II.The current assets are mostly inventories and cash or cash equivalent; III.The main liabilities of Jeronimo Martins Group are current (about 55%) concentrated mostly in trade creditors, accrued costs and deferred income; IV.The noncurrent liabilities are mostly Borrowings; V.Total Shareholders’ Equity represent around 30% of Total Shareholders’ Equity and Liabilities; VI.The biggest changes in assets, 2010 to 2011, are referred to derivative financial Instruments (-78%) and Cash and Cash equivalents (74%); VII.Changes, 2010 to 2011, in current assets are 27,1% and noncurrent are 2,4%; VIII.The biggest changes in liabilities and total equity are referred to retained earnings (250%) and fair value and other reserves (-101%), provisions for risk and contingences (106%); IX.Changes, in 2010 to 2011, in current liabilities are 11% and noncurrent are -27% and total equity are 32,63%; The structure, values and changes listed above means that Jeronimo Martins Group had, in 2010 and 2011, mostly of its assets as noncurrent, which aren’t expect to be converted into cash or consumed within 12 month. The current ratio is below 1, so this company doesn’t have a big liquidity. Analyzed the 10 biggest companies in the food area, the current ratio is below those values observed such as in Dole food company (current ratio is 1,5). The current ratio is an entity ability to meet its current obligations or to maturing short term obligations, is an important measure of its financial health. This company present 0,406 (2010) and 0,464 (2011) current ratios, more current liabilities than current assets. The total debt to equity ratio represents the long term viability of the company, measure the degree of the indebtedness relative to its equity funding. This company present 2 (2010 and 2011) total debt to equity ratio, more total debt than equity, this imply that greater is this ratio greater is strain on the company to make regular payments to debts holders and higher is the risk of bankruptcy.

Organizations as Open Systems – China Star Chinese Restaurant

Relationship: worked as an order taker five years ago. Responsibilities included taking and packing the orders, end-of-the-day bookkeeping. Introduction China Star is a fifteen-year old, mid-size Chinese restaurant serves common Chinese dishes. It has a dinning area, and a smaller bar/administrative area that has a back door where customers come to pick up their telephone orders. The staffs include the owner/manager, an order taker, a waiter, two busboy/girl, four chefs, two part-time delivery drivers, and one cleaner. The restaurant is in an excellent location: very close to the Reston Town Center, surrounded by numerous high-tech companies and rich residents, but has been carrying its flat revenue for the past decade. It opens seven days a week, yet its most profit comes from the $5 range lunch combination during weekdays and carryout dinner orders. The dine-in dinner business had slowed down after several years of its opening, the average table that the waiter serves each night is about five. Carryout orders constitute about one half of the restaurant's total sales. Its customer base has shrunk into office workers and residents within several miles. Analysis As an open system organization, China Star's inputs are the workers, the raw food, and the facilities. Enough workers, the skill of the workers, the quality of the raw material, and the states of the facilities are all important in producing the satisfying output—fresh, delicious food and excellent service. But China Star was far from inputting enough: a) The skills of the chefs were just so-so, and it always had only one waiter. During the busy lunch hours, all the customers came at once; it was impossible for the waiter to take care of each table well and give each customer full attention. Often the customers got impatient, started to call the bus boys, and found that they hardly speak any English. Sometimes when the customers were happy they'd try to talk to the Chinese busgirl and asking her questions about China and Chinese food, but the girl wasn't able to continue the delightful conversation, and the customers were disappointed, even embarrassed. b) In order to save time and costs, restaurants mass process their wholesale ordered raw food once a while. Large restaurants have state of the art refrigerators and freezers for them to separate and preserve the food accordingly. But China Star has only one large walk-in refrigerator for almost everything and the storing wasn't done in a very pleasant manner. Inevitably the food tasted funny several times. c) The restaurant's decoration was old and it looked rather messy and stuffy. The drawings on the wall looked cheap and the Great Wall embossment was coarse. It was not a pleasant place to sit and enjoy a formal meal at all. With various stylish restaurants opening in the area, and the Chinese food rivals developing in every shopping center offering chicken-fried rice of $4.75, China Star has neither product nor price to compete with. It soon entered the Negative Entropy state of an open system. The restaurant failed to take advantage of its surrounding office buildings and residents, most of all, the excellent economy during the late 1990's. Its business fell into the typical â€Å"cheap carry-out Chinese food† image. The dine-in customers felt bored sitting in a typical Chinese restaurant, while they can hang out in a lively place with TV and live band just 3 blocks away. People came to China Star for cheap food only, and carryout orders save tips. But even carryout orders declined soon. During the peak lunch time the telephone order volume is extremely high. Customers often have to be put on hold since there is only one person responsible for taking the orders, send them to the kitchen, pack the orders, and sometimes phone the customer back— again the input is not sufficient. It's easy to make a mistake with disastrous result: one, sometimes two if the orders are switched, very angry and hungry customers that would never recommend this restaurant to others, and food that cannot be resold. Although this system was obviously moving toward its death in a highly competitive environment, the owner wasn't actively seeking solutions. The waiter and other employees were often telling him customers' comments, giving him advises–which applies the â€Å"feedback† principle in the open system theory, but he had ignored them all. (the restaurant was finally redecorated a few years ago, other changes unknown) It's actually not very hard for China Star to start a better cyclic. Restaurants are relatively less-complicate organizations. The most important principles are inputs and feedbacks. The restaurant could increase the human, material, information inputs, and adapt more the changing environments, for example, revise the menu and serve one-of-a-kind Chinese appetizers with Chinese wines and expensive, authentic green teas; hire more waiters and a few performer play soothing music with Chinese traditional instrument for the exhausted people at the end of the day; construct a website for the restaurant and make the carryout ordering web-enabled. And of course, listen to the feedbacks, both from the outside and inside of the organization. As these changes apply, the restaurant will also increase the price on its menu, without worrying about irritating its customers. As mentioned before Reston is a high-income area where people are more into â€Å"style† and willing to pay more to have a good time or feel special. Once the restaurant has established its reputation and attracts certain group of loyal customers, its sales will become stable and the organization enters the steady state until the environment changes again.

Living with My Parents vs. Living Independently

Living With My Parents vs. Living Independently I always thought that moving out of my parents’ house would be an exciting new start to life. Apparently nobody thought to explain to me how stressful and cost-consuming life really is outside the comfort of mommy and daddy’s embrace. Living with my parents and living independently differ exponentially, but living with my parents isn’t nearly as dreadful as I thought it to be as a teenager. The first upsetting difference between living alone rather than with my parents is the food.When I lived with my parents, it was easy to eat a healthy, home cooked meal and not have to worry about preparing it. It usually just appeared on the table as an alluring plate of deliciousness without having to lift a finger. On the other hand, trying to make a meal is much more complicated when living alone. The freezer is normally stocked full of microwavable foods that taste like plastic and the refrigerator maybe has some five-day-ol d milk.Gaining weight is easier than ever when the only cuisine available is fatty and nutritionally deficient. The second depressing part of living alone is the money, or more precisely, the lack thereof. When residing at my mom and dad’s house, wasting money on luxuries was the most exciting part. Not to mention my parents’ seemingly endless amount of money to help pay for anything and everything was always a plus. Saving money was even possible at the time. But now, living independently definitely has its drawbacks.How many bills can possibly come in one month? With barely enough money to pay the bills, how is a girl supposed to shop for anything other than frozen goodies and Ramen? And forget about trying to save any cash, rummaging through my coin jar has become my favorite new hobby. Furthermore, who knew that cleaning didn’t just magically happen? Coming home from work and school to a clean house was definitely a convenience, though it went unnoticed at t he time. I was previously unaware that so many things in the house could get dirty.The cleaning never stops! Piles of laundry lay scattered across the floor of the house because apparently not every house comes equipped with a washer and dryer! Living with my parents might have been intolerable at times, but it made life so much easier. Not having to worry about food, money, and cleaning probably doesn’t seem like a big deal to most people, but it’s definitely a luxury. I appreciate how easy and carefree life was while living with my parents because I now realize how arduous life can really be.

Teresa of Avila Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Teresa of Avila - Essay Example She was born on 28th March 1515. Early in her young age Theresa was caught between the strict but honest father and romantic mother. She was caught between detached discipline and over attachment to worldiness. Though she lead an ordinary life , the sense of sin never left her, as she was drawn more and more into the worldly things like flirting and rebelling. At the age of 16, just to discipline her, her father had to send her to the Augustinian nun’s convent for education. Though she hated it first, she found the place less strict than her father; but due to illness she had to leave the place after 18 months. When the time came to choose between marriage and religious life, she chose the later because that was the only safe place for a person tempted by sin. She left for the Carmelite convent of the Incarnation at Avila were she was almost a loner. She started to learn and practice mental prayer to keep Jesus Christ always with her. But there were enough distractions in the convent. Nuns from the rich families were more attentive to their physical appearance than to their inner spiritual life. The prestige of a nun was measured not by piety but by money.

(Dear #2996) Essay in Philosophy class Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

(Dear #2996) in Philosophy class - Essay Example This short paper focuses for the main part on the subject of God in addition to the soul, rebirth and the more mundane affair of marriage. We also discuss points that would help to explain this situation that is peculiar to the Buddhist religion. In relation to mundane life, the noble Buddha did not delve extensively on the topic of marriage for example, so no rules were laid down dealing with married life although he did give some basic advice to ensure that people would lead happily married lives. Similarly, there are no direct references to related issues such as divorce or birth control. Nonetheless, worldly concerns were addressed but the focus was on liberation from suffering in this world and general guidance on how to live a good life. The most notable absences however, that one would expect to have been talked about by the founder of a religion, are the subjects of God and soul. A common fallacy is that buddhists deny the existence of both. Some would differ saying that by not proclaiming the existence of God, the noble Buddha in effect denied the existence of God, but even with this position, they cannot claim this with certainty for the very reason that no clear statement was made accepting the existence of God. At the same time, we could also argue that God does exist because there are sufficient records of noble Buddha discussing God in the Buddhist scriptures. In regard to the soul, the position of Buddhism is similar to Islam wherein God responded to a question concerning the soul; that people have only been given a little knowledge. The noble Buddha however was more strict in ensuring that his teachings were kept simple, and he did not intend to cause any confusion. In actual fact, the noble Buddha neither categorically denied God or the soul, nor did he affirm their existence. What the noble Buddha discouraged was speculating on such subjects on which one does not have proper knowledge. The noble Buddhas position was to either remain

Knowledge Management - managing knowledge Essay

Knowledge Management - managing knowledge - Essay Example According to Dimitris Karagiannis (2005), knowledge is a combination of many factors which together makes up strategies that helps in making decisions. It includes aspects of understanding of the organization and its people and the experience with the organization or others in the same line. It includes organized information from documents and other artefacts in the organization or outside. It is a difficult task to organize knowledge and get the best value from it. There must be highly organized initiative in the aspects of organization itself, its people and the enabling environment. According to Sanchez Ron (2001), knowledge management is a technology by itself which helps in assessing the actual and potential contribution to the process of creating and sharing of new ideas and decisions in an organization. It is good to understand that knowledge management is more of a process than a product. It represents a process in which ideas and facts are gathered, carefully analyzed and considered before arriving at any strategy. It forms the bases for effective planning and understanding of a strategy. It provides a way in which unstructured data is processed to become a more useful data that can form basis of strategizing for the benefit of the organization. The process consists of some components that are important and cannot be ignored. It requires consulted effort or collaboration from all quarters of the organization. It is important for all to contribute to the process in order to have diverse knowledge about a subject matter. In requires the aspect of content ma nagement and taxonomy management. Hence any effective organizational management must put into practice the knowledge management process in order to have effective strategies that work for the organization. According to Chun Choo and Nick Bontis, (2007), there are two broadly recognized approaches or technologies to management that are currently practiced in many companies and which are being advocated by many consultant firms. Sound management strategies require an extremely creating synthesis of the two approaches as each helps to offset the limitations of the other. The two approaches that are being advocated in company strategy are tacit and explicit forms of knowledge are being used in organizational management. The two approaches are merely forms of organized knowledge that can be applied in management. They are knowledge approaches which are fundamental in making decision. In the process of codification or articulation, tacit knowledge can be transformed to explicit knowledge. Tacit knowledge approach in strategies As the name suggest, this is the knowledge that cannot be easily shared with other people. It is the knowledge that is possessed inside and which is difficult to communicate to the organization unless through an enhanced process of knowledge management. This is the kind of knowledge that people carry in their minds. It is a form of knowledge that is difficult to access unless one is willing to contribute it to the organizatio

Opening a Krispy Kreme Doughnut in Spain Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

Opening a Krispy Kreme Doughnut in Spain - Essay Example The target group should be adolescents and children from affluent households who would not mind spending more for being a part of hip and happening brigade (ICMR, 2003). Undertaking local manufacturing operations This is perhaps the trickiest part of all since Krispy Kreme Doughnuts are advertised as tasting best when they are served hot off the frying pan. Hence, it is imperative that some sort of heating arrangement must be available at the outlet but the crucial question is whether local manufacturing operations should, rather, could be undertaken. Considering the distance between Spain and USA and also taking into account the freshness of these doughnuts which happens to be one of their USPs; even if the first few consignments are air freighted from US it would not be economically feasible to get them on a regular basis from United States. So, with some initial help from the parent company and under the sharp eyes of their quality controllers, local production must have to be und ertaken after imparting sufficient training to local recruits.