The details given below are summary of the statements of Financial Position of six public companies engaged in different industries in their project executions of various tasks.

	A %	B %	C %	D %	E %	F %
Land and building Other non-current assets Stocks and work in progress Trade debtors Other debtors Cash and investment	10 17 44 6 11 12	2 1 - 77 - 20	26 34 22 15 - 3	24 - 55 4 8 9	57 13 16 1 2 11	5 73 1 13 5 3
	100	100	100	100	100	100
Capital and reserves Creditors: over one year Creditors: under one year Trade Other Bank overdraft	37 12 - 32 16 3	5 5 - 85 5 -	62 4 - 34 - -	58 13 - 14 14 1	55 6 - 24 15 -	50 25 - 6 11 8
Total capital employed	100	100	100	100	100	100

The activities of each company are as follows:

1. Operator of chain of retail supermarkets.
2. Sea ferry operator.
3. Property investor and house builder. Apart from supplying managers, including site management, for the house building side of its operations, this company completely sub-contracts all building work.
4. A vertically integrated company in the food industry which owns farms, flour mills, bakeries and retail outlets.
5. Commercial bank with network of branches.
6. Contractor in the civil engineering industry.

Note: no company employ off balance sheet finance such as leasing

You are required:

1. To state which of the above activities relate to which set of Statement of Financial Position details giving brief summary of your reasoning in each case.

Note: no marks will be awarded for matching where no explanation is given.

1. What do you consider to be the major limitation of ratio analysis as a means of interpreting accounting information?