FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT - Marks and Spencer - Essay Example

These principles revolve around the responsibilities of firm towards their stakeholders, customers and employee. With these principles different suggestions are provided, discussing that what extra should be included by the Hermes in its Principles. The paper ends with a brief description on conclusion. Marks and Spencer is the famous British retail chain with 760 stores working in more than 30 countries. This retail chain is the most iconic and recognized chain in the world whose 520 stores are serving only in United Kingdom.

This store chain is famous as it is the largest clothing retailer and is consider being multi-billion pound food retailer. Recently the store introduces the homes wares including different wares for furniture's and other products. It was the tail of 1998 when this store consider to be the first British store who make pre-tax profit of one billion pounds but later it went into some crisis but by 2007 it start growing economically and showing high profit margins to their investors. According to Emilio Barucci , (2003) Financial management policies are the one that are used by the firm to know that how they should finance their business, what should they provide the shareholders in return, what would be their cost structure and how they should manage their capital structure.

This may include various structures that are taken in consideration to know that either the firm is acquiring better financial management system in the firm. Hermes is famous for its principles specially taking shareholders in consideration. Below Marks and Spencer financial management policies are seek by the researcher to know that either they are in accordance with Hermes principles or not. Financial Management Policies of the storeAgency theoryThomas E. Copeland, John Fred Weston, Kuldeep Shastri, (2005) argued that agency theory of the firm includes the profit sharing, efficiency wages and performance measures.

The agency theory of marks and Spencer is in accordance with the principles of Hermes. Today 290000 shareholders are present with marks and Spencer and the reason is that they are provided with effective return on their investments. Taking full care of the employee's, the employee's are provided with 500 pound bonus provided to each single employee on their performance. This bonus providing enhances the loyalty of the employees. When taking profit sharing in consideration than the firm ensures the stakeholders that they will be provided with maximum profits, and the reason is that they want to keep their stakeholders with them at long-term basis.

The firm is providing efficient end results with the food retail shops as these are earning highest. Moreover, the firm has launched the performance measuring system to know that what they can do more to increase the market performance of the firm. The agency theory of the Marks and Spencer is in accordance with Hermes but the only thing that they lack is efficient performance measures. According to Jean-Pierre Danthine, John B. Donaldson, (2005)the performance measure of the employees and their policies must be used to now that what are their actual performance.

Marks and Spencer is dealing with more than 700 retail stores and thus measuring each employee performance would be difficult, but by