2024/25 Undergraduate Module Catalogue

LUBS3120 Forensic Accounting and Finance

10 creditsClass Size: 90

Module manager: Prof. Steven Toms
Email: j.s.toms@leeds.ac.uk

Taught: Semester 2 (Jan to Jun) View Timetable

Year running 2024/25

Pre-requisite qualifications

LUBS1225 Accounting for Managers
OR
LUBS1235 Introductory Financial Accounting
OR
LUBS1915 Introduction to Financial Accounting
OR
LUBS2290 Intermediate Financial Accounting
OR
LUBS2291 Financial Accounting and Reporting
OR
LUBS2205 Corporate Finance
OR
LUBS2206 Corporate Financial Management

This module is approved as a discovery module

Module summary

Forensic Accounting and Finance is an optional level three module intended to provide a critical appreciation of the causes and consequences of financial fraud. It involves an evaluation of the key issues in a researched case study of a financial fraud, acknowledging and referencing appropriate source material and comparison with other frauds and financial scandals. The module provides analytical models that allow you to appreciate the consequences of unethical behaviour at all levels of organisations, from employees to entrepreneurs, and offer professional solutions and advice.

Objectives

The module aims to set out the context, motivations and rationalisation of financial fraud. It explains how such frauds are perpetuated, detected and investigated with a view to understanding how effective enterprise level and regulatory mechanisms to prevent recurrence might be successfully implemented, using examples from the present day, historical and international contexts. The module will illustrate how forensic techniques are employed to investigative fraud and provide an understanding of associated legal processes and utilise analytical models to illustrate the common and unique features of frauds, developing understanding of appropriate professional responses to it.

Learning outcomes
Upon completion of this module students will be able to interpret and outline:
- the causes and consequences of financial statement fraud
- theories and relevant empirical research evidence in the field of accounting, corporate finance, organisations, psychology, law and financial markets
- alternative historical, national and regulatory contexts in which legal and illegal uses of accounting occur
- alternative methods of accounting and business valuation
- strengths and weaknesses in current technical standards and accounting practice by evaluating their usefulness in preventing unethical practices

Skills outcomes
Upon completion of this module students will be able to
Transferable:
- Apply numerical and statistical skills to manipulate and interrogate data
- Apply critical thinking in independently locating, extracting, analysing arguments, data and information from multiple sources
- Structure and communicate quantitative and qualitative information
- Work effectively in a team

Subject specific:
- Extract relevant information to understand the determinants of fraud and formulate potential solutions to prevent the occurrence of fraud in structured and unstructured business situations
- Interpret financial and non-financial information to provide a professional insight into the operations of a complex business

Syllabus

Indicative content:
- creative accounting
- business valuation
- psychology of fraud
- corporate crime, productive and destructive entrepreneurship
- historical and international perspectives
- financial and accounting regulation
- fraud investigations

Teaching methods

Delivery type	Number	Length hours	Student hours
Lectures	9	2.00	18.00
Seminar	4	1.00	4.00
Private study hours			78.00
Total Contact hours			22.00
Total hours (100hr per 10 credits)			100.00

Private study

This could include a variety of activities, such as reading, watching videos, question practice and exam preparation.

Opportunities for Formative Feedback

Your teaching methods could include a variety of delivery models, such as face-to-face teaching, live webinars, discussion boards and other interactive activities. There will be opportunities for formative feedback throughout the module.

Methods of assessment

Coursework

Assessment type	Notes	% of formal assessment
Assignment	3,000 words	100.00
Total percentage (Assessment Coursework)		100.00

The resit for this module will be 100% by assessed 3,000 word coursework.

Reading list

The reading list is available from the Library website

Last updated: 05/06/2024 16:14:59

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