Hello, dear friend, you can consult us at any time if you have any questions, add WeChat: THEend8_
MSc Accounting & Financial Management/MSc Finance
AcF702
First Draft Grade: E
Please note that the grade issued as part of your first draft feedback represents an assessment of your
performance to date, and is not necessarily indicative of the grade expected for your final dissertation. In all
cases, final dissertation marks are conditional on the extent to which you address the comments and suggestions
made below and in the "General Comments" document. Accordingly, high grades (A and B) at the draft stage
will only translate into high final marks if you act on the suggestions contained in the feedback document. Poor
grades (D to F) do not necessarily indicate that a poor final dissertation grade will be achieved, since students
now have the opportunity to address any deficiencies that may have given rise to a poor first-draft grade, as
outlined in the feedback documents.
Overall comments
• This work needs significant changes to satisfy the standards of MSc dissertation. The
current work is simply like a report on the nature, pros and cons of the syndicated loan
market. However, the dissertation is an empirical exercise that aims to answer a specific
research question with two major parts (1) a literature review, and (2) empirical
analysis. Both parts are not covered in your dissertation. The literature review section
in your dissertation cannot be regarded as a literature review.
• The main issue is that there is no research question with clear testable predictions. This
dissertation aims at studying the advantages and disadvantages of the syndicated loan
market. There are two issues with that: (1) this is not a research question, and (2) you
don’t have a clear prediction to test with data.
• I recommend you to check our lecture materials on Moodle and Teams. I have provided
examples of potential research questions in the lectures. For example, does
misreporting affect loan contracting? I have, also, provided papers, data and codes
related to that topic. I have suggested other ideas and provided the related data and
codes.
• You need to look at prior years’ dissertations on Moodle as a benchmark.
Specific comments
Title
As stated above, there is no research question and this is reflected in the title.
Introduction
- A good introduction should cover the question you are trying to address. Why it is
important? How are you answering the question? What are your main results? and how
they are related to prior papers? Look at other papers covered in class.
- If you are interested in the effect of misreporting on loan terms, the introduction should
cover the points below:
o What is the question?
o Why this question is important?
o Why do you expect misreporting/restatement to affect loan terms? Why lenders
should respond to misreporting?
o How are you answering the question (sample and model)? You need one
paragraph saying “To answer the research question, this dissertation uses
regression analysis for a sample of xxx loans to xxx US borrowers between
1996 and 2017”
o Summarize your main results and how they are related to prior papers.
o Look at Graham et al. (2008)’s introduction as an example.
Literature review
1. The current version of the literature review can’t be classified as a review of prior
research, but rather a very broad discussion of the development of syndicated loans,
advantages, etc. without citing source materials. By the way, any reader won’t be able
to understand what is JH bank?
2. I suggest that you focus your dissertation on a proper question as mentioned in the
overall comments above. If you want to study the effect of misreporting on loan
contracting, you need to review the literature on misreporting (or quality of financial
numbers) and the literature on the effect of misreporting on loan contracting. You can
3
use Amiram et al (2018) and Armstrong et al (2010 – section 5) as a good starting point.
The assigned papers for group presentations will be very useful, especially Graham et
al (2008) and Kim et al (2011). See details of these papers below (you can find it by
searching the title at Lancaster OneSearch):
3. In all cases, before writing your literature review, you should review our Teams
sessions on the literature review (04-05-2021). Also, you should review week three
materials on Moodle.
Empirical Part
- There is no empirical analysis
- In the empirical analysis section, you should (1) explain your regression model
(regression equation, dependent variable, independent variable, control variables), (2)
include variables definitions, and (3) include empirical results tables (e.g. descriptive
statistics, correlations and regressions).
- If you work on misreporting and loan contracting, your regression variables could be
as follows:
o Dependent variable: loan feature (e.g. loan spread/interest).
o Main independent variable(s): misreporting.
o Control variables: you can follow papers and pick the most important controls
from prior research e.g. Kim et al (2011) and Graham et al (2008).
4
Presentation and writing
- The work is not enough to judge writing and presentation quality. However, some
comments below:
o Make sure to follow the correct referencing and citation conventions. This is
very important and should be addressed before submitting the final draft.
o The references in p.25 are not mentioned in-text (i.e. the main body) and
there is no referencing to source material in your work. In revising your
dissertation, it is very important to cite the source. State the
author's surname and year of publication e.g. Sufi (2007). All references
should be both in-text and in the references list at the end.