Comparing Financial Statements Acquire a re-
= cent annual report for a large company by looking through 1) the files of your business library, accessing the SEC EDGAR ~ database, searching company homepages on the World Wide Web, or directly contacting a company. Use that report to make comparisons with Gateway’s financial statements shown in Appendix A. Prepare a report that includes the following:

a. Compare the number of different types of financial assets reported in the balance sheets of the companies and the way in which they have been summarized and described.

b. Compare the amount of financial assets reported by each company. Which of the two companies has the greater amount of financial assets reported?

c. Review the notes to the financial statements of the companies. Do they have similar or different supplemental information on financial assets in their notes? Which company’s disclosure do you feel is most useful? Explain why.

d. Go to your library and select a company listed in Moody’s Industrial Manual. Compare the amount of information and the form of disclosure about financial assets for the company from Moody’s with that presented in the financial statements of the other two companies. Which company’s information do you find to be the most useful?
Explain why. When would the information contained in Moody’s be more useful than that contained in the financial statements?