AAA Ltd. AAA is a large, privately owned supermarket retail group based in the UK. It has a total of 30 stores throughout the UK. The business is family owned and was founded by Gene Cooper who has recently stepped down as chairperson. From 20X3, the business has been run by one of Genes children, Lindsay. The company has always been debt averse but there is evidence that the business is being held back by a lack of capital investment, especially in the key areas of online sales and store layouts. As a result, Lindsay is considering borrowing 200m to fund the cost of developing an online sales division (AAA has no online sales activity at present). The finance director also wants to invest in a new double entry bookkeeping system as the current one has led to misstatements and errors in the financial statements. Lindsay is not convinced this is an important or beneficial investment, however. AAA are notorious for centralising services and functions, and the company has the highest operating gearing ratio in the sector. Lindsay wants to continue with this policy and has plans to centralise more retail store functions which will require relocating staff to the head office. Many of these relocated staff will be required to work on the new online sales project. As part of the year X4 audit, AAAs auditors noticed that the organisations incremental budgeting system required managers to provide very little justification for their budget requests. They also identified significant budgetary slack in AAA.