Advance corporate finance - Essay Example

Advance Corporate Finance Table of Content Introduction 3 Organizational Structure 3 Corporate Governance 5 Previous Merger and Acquisition of Crown Limited 7 Reference 8 Introduction This paper represents organizational structure and corporate governance of Crown Limited, a famous international entertainment company and one of the largest entertainment groups in Australia. In 2007, Crown Limited was established after divested from its parent company Publishing and Broadcasting Limited. It was the gaming division and assets as Crown Limited.

Rest asset of PBL was renamed as Consolidated Media Holding. Core business of Crown Limited is in gaming and entertainment sector. It wholly owns two famous Australia’s leading entertainment and gamming complexes that are Burswood Entertainment Complex located in Perth and Crown Entertainment Complex located in Melbourne (Crown Limited, 2012). Organizational Structure The organizational structure of Crown limited consists of board of directors, senior management and other divisional employees like senior managers, managers, assistant managers, executives etc in each division like marketing, finance, human resources.

Executives and junior managers report to managers. Managers report to senior managers and senior managers report to top management. Similarly the task strategy implementation processes comes from reverse way like from the top management to the senior managers, followed by mangers and then assistant managers and executives. Figure 1: Organization Structure of Crown Limited (top management) Above diagram represents the top management structure of the company. In the above diagram short form of the designation of top management are given.

Rowen Craigie is CEO& MD i.e. Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director of Crown Limited. Ken Barton is CFO i.e. Chief Financial Officer; Todd Nisbet is EVP i.e. Executive Vice President – Design and Strategy and Michael Neilson is General Counsel and Company Secretary. All three top management report to CMD of the company. Business of Crown Limited consists of two main asset of the company; Burswood Entertainment Complex located in Perth and Crown Entertainment Complex located in Melbourne.

The company has assigned two individual CEO for these two businesses. Greg Hawkins is the CEO of Crown Melbourne Limited and Barry Felstead is the CEO of Burswood Limited. Both of these CEOs report the CEO of Crown Limited directly as they have effective communication with chief financial officer, company secretary and executive vice president of Crown Limited (URI, 1998). Corporate Governance Board of directors, top management and employees of Crown Limited is highly committed to the implementation and maintenance standard corporate governance practices.

The company also disclose the extent to which it follows corporate governance policies, code of conducts and practices. Corporate governance of policy of the company includes securities trading policies, communication policies, disclosure of information policies, risk management policies, environmental policies, occupational safety and health policies and diversity policies. The board and top management of this organization has been effectively following all these policies for maintenance of efficient organizational culture, ethical business practices and efficient corporate governance.

Effective code of conduct has been developed for the board of directors and the employees. All board members, top management and employees strictly follow the company’s code of conduct to deliver maximum output without any britches of code of conduct (Crown Limited1, 2012). The company has developed and follow eight principles to efficiently maintain corporate governance in the organization. Principle 1 is for management and oversight for lay solid foundation. Responsibilities of board of directors and senior executives, evaluating performance of members and executives and induction process for new executives are assigned in principle 1.

Board is responsible for monitoring the company on behalf of the shareholders of the company. Top management and board are collaboratively responsible for assessing significant risk associated with business practice and ensure that the possible solutions to adequately counter those risks (Crown Limited2, 2012). Performance of senior executives is evaluated by the pre assigned performance objectives. Remuneration of executives is developed on the basis of performance and it is evaluated annually.

Principle 2 is for maintain effective structure of the board to add value to the strategic decisions. Crown board has developed different committee for each of major department of the organization to assist in carrying and maintaining responsibilities. Each committee has three members and one chairperson. Performance of the committee members is also evaluated (Crown Limited3, 2012). Principle 3 has been developed for promoting responsible strategic decision making and ethical business practice.

Different policies are developed for concerning diversity and trading in company securities. Principal 4 is responsible for relevant and reliable financial reporting. Audit and corporate governance committee is responsible for safeguard in financial reporting. Principle 5 ensures company’s compliance with the stock exchange. It is also responsible for timely balanced disclosure. Principle 6 respects different rights of shareholders. Policies are developed for effective communication with the shareholders about transparent financial information about the company.

Principle 7 has been developed for effective risk management and control systems. Principle 8 is responsible for fairly and timely remuneration of executive directors, top managements and employees. Previous Merger and Acquisition of Crown Limited Crown limited owns a portfolio of several investments. Crown’s core business is complimented by accumulated of this gaming investment. Major acquisitions of crown limited are Betfair Australasia Pty limited, Cannery Casino Resorts LLC, Aspers Holdings Limited.

Betfair Australasia Pty Limited is a joint venture company in Australia which was established in 2004. Crown Limited has 50% interest in this business. It is an online betting exchange for the customer of New Zealand and Australia. This acquisition helped the company to start its presence in global market though this business is done through telephone and internet. Cannery Casino resort is the second international investment of Crown Limited which made the company physical market presence in US market and it gets access to potential US customers and also foreigners from other countries.

Crown holds 50% stake in Aspers Holdings Limited. It is a leading casino business in United Kingdom. Crown also purchased 50% stake in gateway Casino which operates in Canada, 50% stake in Aspinals, a United Kingdom casino business. All of these major acquisitions of stake of international casino and hotel business are responsible for Crown’s current market capitalization in international market. Its share price has raised up to nearly double in last few years because of theses major investments by the company.

It started acquisition of major stake in international casinos of United States, Canada and UK after it’s demerge from the parent company in 2007. Reference Crown Limited. (2012). About Crown. [Online]. Available at: http://www.crownlimited.com/about/. [Accessed on 30 August, 2012]. Crown Limited1. (2012). Corporate Governance Policies. [Online]. Available at: http://www.crownlimited.com/policies/. [Accessed on 30 August, 2012]. Crown Limited2. (2012). Corporate Governance Codes. [Online]. Available at: http://www.

crownlimited.com/codes/. [Accessed on 30 August, 2012]. Crown Limited3. (2012). Board Committees. [Online]. Available at: http://www.crownlimited.com/Page.aspx?ID=180. [Accessed on 30 August, 2012]. URI. (1998). Organizational Structure. [Online]. Available at: http://www.uri.edu/research/lrc/scholl/webnotes/Struture.htm. [Accessed on 30 August, 2012].