You witnessed a heated argument between two first year undergraduate students reading Bachelor of Business Administration (Andy and Richmond). These students came across a published account of Unilever Ghana Limited in the newspapers and Andy felt that it was a waste of resources to publish the financial statements in the newspapers considering the cost involved. He 3 further argued that financial reports are meant to inform management about the financial performance and position of the organisation for decision making purposes hence every organisation has the right to prepare financial statements to suit its operations. Richmond on the other hand argued that financial statements are needed by several groups of people for decision making purposes and so must be prepared based on certain laid down principles and laws. He further argued that there are laws requiring what to include in the preparation of the financial reports and when to publish financial reports.

As a final year MBA student reading Financial statement Analysis and decision making, educate Andy and Richmond on the content, users and legal requirements for the preparation and publication of general-purpose financial statements by listed companies