General Mills Argumentative Essay Example

a viable investment option, banks for lending purposes to measure liquidity, competitors to see how they stack up, and the government may analyze them to make sure they are collecting an accurate amount of tax from the company.

E. Who are General Mills external auditors? Describe the two “opinion” letters that General Mills received in 2006. In your own words, what do these opinions mean? Why are both opinions dated several months after General Mills’ year end? i. General Mills external auditors are KPMG LLP. The two opinion letters that General Mills received from KPMG is where KPMG will list any findings from the audit testing they ran. KPMG is ultimately responsible to test if the financial position of General Mills is materially stated correctly on their financials and that management maintained effective internal control over financial reporting. Both opinions are dated several months after General Mills year end because they are not written until the completion of the audit.

F. Use a spreadsheet to construct common-size income statements (which General Mills calls Statements of Earnings) and balance sheets for 2006 and 2005. Common-size income statements scale each income statement line item by net sales. Common-size balance sheets are created by dividing each figure on a given year’s balance sheet by that year’s total assets, thereby creating a balance sheet on a “percent of assets” basis. You will use these common-size statements in answering several of the questions below.