Peter Moizer
Professor Moizer has been the Dean of Leeds University Business School since 2008. He was a Council member of the ICAEW and is a strategic advisor to the Greater Manchester Pension Fund (€22 billion)
Location Leeds University Business School
Activity
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Peter Moizer replied to Alice Theobald
Alice and Catherine, you make the good point that one has to plan for the unexpected, because life is not predictable. Flexibility is very important
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Jason, you have a good grasp of the supermarket sector.
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Khaled, you have to know about the product before you will think of buying it!
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Joseph, it is an interesting exercise to compare the brand of the Unilever company with its brand names. I think its product brand names are probably more powerful.
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Michelle and Catherine, you both make good points. Part of the answer to the relatively higher price of "free from" foods may be the lower volume of production and so they do not enjoy the economies of scale of very large food producers.
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Ryanair is also known for flying people to places close to where they want to go and so to airports with cheaper landing charges
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Jonathan and Viktor, Lidl has been successful in the UK because they found a gap in the market and set about occupying it.
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Catherine, some good points.
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Fermina, good points about Lidl. Tesco is probably an example of hubris
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Maariyaah, your description of Inayah shows great analysis on your part
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Hermal, Beiersdorf sounds a good example. Not one I know.
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Fermina, you are right without these attributes a business will not succeed
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Mark and Catherine, you both highlight the importance of having a good reputation. The challenge is how to create such a reputation.
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Bruno, agreed but you have to offer something that the customer wants to purchase
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Anastasia, you are right if your customers do not trust you, then you have a problem
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Athansios, yes everyone should be on the same page
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Agree, it is vital to know one's market
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Peter Moizer replied to Ayan Patel
Yes Ayan, leadership is key.
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Maariyaah, yes you need determination, but you also need a good idea for the business!
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Peter Moizer replied to Catherine Coates
The last cohort were very positive about what they had learnt from the case studies
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Peter Moizer replied to Maariyaah shaheen
Maariyaah, we worked hard to get such a good group of people.
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Yes Ben, the glossary should help as you suggest. Glad you want to come to Leeds to study Accounting and Finance
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Peter Moizer replied to Arian Dervishi
Good points Arian, hope the Leeds MBA is going well
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Peter Moizer replied to Alex Page
It should give you a taste
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Peter Moizer replied to Scott Tarpey
hope you get something from the course
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Muzafar, this is a good example of how a small shop can compete with a large supemarket. The key is differentiation and in your example, this comes from selling local produce.
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Paul and Irina, getting cash from customers who have bought on credit is one of the biggest challenges. There is where repeat customers are so valuable, because it is reasonably good assumption that is a customer has paid on time before that they will do so again.
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Ahmed, your small pottery company is an excellent example of the challenges facing a small business, which needs to get cash from custormers.
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Cherise, your local fruit and veg store is a good example of daily decision making
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Cherise, a good summary of the qualities of good financial information but I would add the concept of relevance, information has to be relevant to the decision in hand.
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Nicole, a good quick SWOT analysis
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Peter Moizer replied to Cherise Smith
Cherise, I am glad you are enjoying the course.
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Peter Moizer replied to Flan Lygo
Flan, I agree that knowing the profitablility of a business is important, but the balance sheet does provide an idea of the state of the business at a point in time, particularly if the debts of the business are large relative to the assets.
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Andy, both cash flow and cash cycle have their uses. Cash cycle is useful in understanding the time it takes for cash outflows on purchases etc to become cash inflows when customers pay.
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Peter Moizer replied to Andy Wiggins
Andy, I agree with your sentiment about knowing what you are doing rather than relying on accounting packages, but I would suggest that Excel is a good way to do the manual analysis.
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Peter Moizer replied to Suzanne Heath
Suzanne, one of the important lessons of budgeting is the need to budget for unexpected items, because something always turns up and it is rarely pleasant!
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Peter Moizer replied to Samuel Allsop
Samuel, I am glad that as a student you are learning to budget. This is one of life's great skills!
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Peter Moizer replied to Bob Marshall
Now the UK's two main industries are the financial sector and tourism. This would have been hard to predict forty years ago.
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Peter Moizer replied to Hannah Smith
Hannah, a good example of planning.
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Michael, you are right to identify the speed of technological change as a big factor in the survival of a business. Those businesses that can adapt can flourish and those stuck in the old ways of doing things tend to go to the wall. It is not just finance departments that have seen their way of working change, although I can remember those old videos of...
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Peter Moizer replied to Diana Hentulescu
Diana, certainly without the initial start up funds, a business cannot get going and the biggest cause of failure of new businesses is underestimating the amount of start up capital they will need.
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Peter Moizer replied to Nkese Ajimmy
Nkese, having an audit is how businesses convince shareholders that their money is safely invested in the business because the shareholders can have confidence in the financial data published in a company's annual report.
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Rimman, a good summary of the finance function.
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Peter Moizer replied to Patrick Loureiro
Patrick, there are lots of examples of companies which seemed to be permanent fixtures on the high street, which have disappeared. it is because of the fast changing nature of today's market place, particularly those markets which can be served by internet shopping.
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Nuria, you are right to point out that shareholders can be put off a company if it appears to have too much debt. What often influences shareholders is the nature of the business of the company. If the company's sales are volatile, then less debt is better. If the company has a steady stream of income, such as a utility company selling electricity, gas or...
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Peter Moizer replied to Rimman Lal
Rimman, you have grasped the essential fact that having a budget allows you to compare what actually happened with what you thought would happen. You can then decide what to do about the difference, if you need to do something.
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Peter Moizer replied to Melissa Cobb
Melissa, you make a good point that whilst it is good to be close to customers, so are your competitors and so you have to strike a balance.
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Nkese, what you find if you look deeply into a business is that everyone is important. It is a bit like trying to decide which is the most important organ in your body. Is it the heart, lungs, brain etc. The simple answer is that they are all vital to life.
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Peter Moizer replied to Lauren Carey
Lauren, I see budgeting as part of a planning process. You have to have some idea of what will be the consequences of doing something.
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Mauricio, you make a good point about fashion items, where there is a need to be selling the latest designs. Getting the balance right in terms of how much new stock to hold is not easy.
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Peter Moizer replied to Daniel Graves
Daniel, you raise a good point and it is often seen in bulk discounts. Do you save money overall by buying in bulk, if you have to spend money storing the stock?
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Muzafar, you raise a good point about an individual shareholder's need for cash. One cannot always have the luxury of waiting to sell at the top of the market, assuming that one was sufficiently confident to when that was!
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Mohan, I agree, sensitivity analysis is a good way to get some feel as to which elements of an investment appraisal are particularly important to get right.
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Flan you make a good point about the commercial power of large corporations and their use of it. All that small companies can do is to name and shame the larger ones, but as you say they then risk being put on a black list.
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Paul, it is true that there can be some non-voting shares, but there have to be some voting ones as well! Hence some group of shareholders has to take decisions. Non-voting shares are like any other product. To get someone to want to buy them, they have to offer something worth having at the right price.
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One of the dangers of these more sophisticated investment appraisal methods is that people lose sight of the fact that they are based on forecasts of future cash flows and get seduced by the technique. A complex financial calculation is only as good as the data. Often a simple questioning approach is best.
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Julanda, I really liked your summary of crowdfunding.
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Peter Moizer replied to Mark Nedza
There is also a new dimension with crowdfunding and that is that the product or service has to have some wow factor that makes it stand out and draw in potential investors.
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Peter Moizer replied to Vere Thorpe
Vere, a good point. Bank managers need to feel that they can get their money back, either because the business looks profitable or because the business is offering some security for the loan (usually property), which can be called in if the company has trouble making its interest and loan repayments.
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Peter Moizer replied to Alexandra Offord
Alexandra, this is an excellent point. If you take out a loan, then surplus cash has to be generated to pay the interest and some of the capital. This is what happens when people take out a mortgage on a house. They need to make the mortgage payments otherwise they could have their house repossessed.
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You have to distinguish between companies whose shares are traded on a stock exchange and for which there is therefore a market price that you can discover and those companies which are private and for whom the shares have no market price. For private companies, the share price is determined by a bargaining process between the issuer of the shares and the...
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John, predicting which shares will enjoy big price rises and which will suffer large share price falls requires specific knowledge about the company that is not generally known. Most people prefer to own a portfolio of shares, so that they might own shares in 30 or more different companies. The hope is that more will go up than go down!
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Shareholders have to agree to issue more shares and they can be issued to existing shareholders or new ones at a price similar to the current share price and so existing shareholders should not lose out.
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Peter Moizer replied to Yeray Fernández Chávez
Yeray, deciding how much cash to invest in profit producing assets is always a difficult decision. Often the decision is made on the basis of what future cash surpluses can be expected to result from the investment, because the investment has to be justified in terms of what new cash surpluses arise from it.
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Peter Moizer replied to Scott Girling
Scott, you have identified a lot of brands of these two giants of the consumer goods business, but these are not always the names of the companies that they acquired.
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Peter Moizer replied to Milan Farhan
Welcome to the Business School!
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Katherine, thanks for such positive feedback on the plain English.
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Mohan, investing goes beyond simple financial planning as you have to balance issues like your attitude to risk and the time horizon over which you can commit the money. As you say, you will also have to collect information to help you make decisions about specific investments, in particular whether the potential investments are priced for the risk and reward...
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Peter Moizer replied to Kelly Hobbs
Kelly, your marriage budgeting looks to be very sensible. I like the identification of "nice to haves".
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Peter Moizer replied to Alison langley
Alison, I am glad that you consult customers to such an extent. As you say, testing out ideas on customers gives you so much valuable information.
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Mohan, a good example of Tesco in Thailand. I am sure many participants will appreciate it as well.
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Mimie, I like your analysis of the success of Metro Bank.
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Kristine, I take the point about perseverance but you need to be doing the right things as well! Effort and enthursiasm are not enough if they are deployed in the wrong areas.
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Peter Moizer replied to Helen Williams
Helen, your motivations sound spot on. I hope we do not disappoint you as you appear to have the beginnings of a successful business.
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Bridget, the choice of software to use to record financial transactions depends on what you want to do with the information as there are a number of products on the market. When I was the treasurer of a charity, a simple spreadsheet was enough for me, because the charity was only small and not a lot of analysis was required.
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Peter Moizer replied to Bridget Marchi
Bridget, you make an important point. It is a challenge to decide when to recognise when a sale has been made. Normally a sale is recognised when the goods or service has been received by the customer, even if it has been made on credit. There is an expectation that debtors will pay up. What normally happens is at the year-end, there is a review of...
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Brenda, you make an important point about the cynicism of some large corporations who effectively finance themselves on the back of small business suppliers by taking a long time to pay their debts.
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Ajani, planning for a wedding is one of the most stressful experiences, particularly as most people only have one big wedding!
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Daniel, some good tips here.
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Letizia, a good analysis for your holiday planning
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Janna, a very good analysis and you should have some good holidays. I am not sure about the reliance on your husband's bookkeeping skills! Hopefully you will be able to do it yourself by the end of the course.
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Patrick, a good analysis of the USP (unique selling proposition) of the Gym Group.
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Manpreet, a good point, the large supermarket chains in the UK select the products in their stores to reflect the area where they are located.
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Matthew, a good point, well made.
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Indrani, you are right, no business can succeed if it does not have a product or service that customers want to buy!
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Manpreet, you make some good points
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Shiyi, there are a number of potential factors that can sink a business, lack of capital is one, but there are others as well as you will see in the course.
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Isaac, a good summary, but I would add: a product that can be produced at a cost below its selling price!
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Peter Moizer replied to Paul Chandler
Paul, I hope the course helps you manage your property development business
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Peter Moizer replied to Katherine Lonsdale
Katherine, money is as important to charities as to for profit businesses. We do have case studies of not-for-profit organisations, such as the health service and the University of Leeds.
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Peter Moizer replied to James Campbell
James, welcome to the course, I hope it is helpful. I hope your final year at Leeds University Business School goes well.
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Controlling stock is one of the great tests of an enterprise. Too much stock drains cash, but too little means you miss sales, lose revenue and customer goodwill. Getting that balance right is an important skill.
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Peter Moizer replied to Nadja Rein
Nadja you sound like a great parent! Your planning is excellent.
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What is wrong with a B&B in Filey?!
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Peter Moizer replied to Mike Harrison
Mike, it is a good that an actuary understands this!
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Peter Moizer replied to Chabane DJAIZ
Chabane, I do not believe that any business can succeed without a plan. It may be that the plan is in the mind of the entrepreneur and is not written down, but there must be a plan somewhere!
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Peter Moizer made a comment
An interesting point about all these examples is that belong to a certain time. It is very rare for a company to be successful over a long period of time. Then you need a product which does not change much, like beer or cola. Any company which relies on technology is being continually challenged by new products and competitors.
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Peter Moizer made a comment
I love these posts! You have all thought hard about what makes a successful business.
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Peter Moizer made a comment
We were very pleased to get such a great group of contributors to our case studies. As you progress through the course, you will see that they have given some fascinating insights.
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Nikki, you make a good point. Entering the data is of no value if you cannot use it. On the other hand, you cannot undertake an analysis if you do not have any data! So it is a question to get you thinking.
