Review Investor & Accountancy Evening III
Accountancy Evening
Someone once said: ‘time flies, when you’re having fun’. Well indeed, looking back at already the third Accountancy Evening, time flies. On the third evening we welcomed Dennis de Vries, Senior Manager at KPMG Netherlands. With past experience at ING, Dennis is currently active with topics like: Blockchain and Bitcoins. He is also active within the KPMG International Blockchain Team. During the lecture, Dennis took us into the current developments and potentials of Blockchain. How can this technology change every aspect of the concept ‘economy’? And what is Blockchain and Bitcoin?
This topic should be discussed more in order to prepare us for such technology and maybe change our current perception of money and economy.
Well for most unversed students, this part created several attempts to shut down our brains. The concept of Blockchain and Bitcoins is very detailed and technological; however, Dennis successfully managed to explain what the technology contains and how it works. Also, evenly important, what the added value is of this technology? During the course of the evening we learned a lot and nice discussions were held between the students and Dennis. This was a positive sign, since this topic should be discussed more in order to prepare us for such technology and maybe change our current perception of money and economy. This was a successful evening in which we had the possibility to learn about changes that might occur in the future and affect our way of living.
Investors Evening
After the second Investor Evening, where Corné van Zeijl was talking us through the financial impacts of events happening around the world (e.g., Brexit and US election), the employees of Accuracy took the stage in the third edition of the Investor Evenings. Accuracy is an organisation that provides independent financial consultancy services to other organisations and shareholders. In their lecture on November 15th they talked about the buy-side and sell-side of the M&A process, and due diligence as well. They showed us several specific points of interest in these processes including several real M&A cases.
Various points of interest concerning risks and prognoses that occur in M&A were presented which highlighted the importance of due diligence to both the buyers and sellers in such large transactions.
During this lecture, they also demonstrated several analyses concerning historical financial information that influence indicators like the EBIT and EBITDA and ultimately the value of an entity. Various points of interest concerning risks and prognoses that occur in M&A were presented which highlighted the importance of due diligence to both the buyers and sellers in such large transactions. In addition to the main focus on due diligence, they also showed us how to use the equity value of Randstad they calcluated in order to see if the company is over- or undervalued compared to the market price. This was a nice tie into the investing theme. Finally, the employees of Accuracy gave information about traineeships, the application process and company information about Accuracy in general. The consultants of Accuracy were very enthusiastic and offered a great interactive lecture to the students!
