Dates and location
Pricing
Hours
Dates and location
Pricing
Hours
Description
Management's Discussion and Analysis (MD&A) serves as a vital narrative within financial reporting, offering invaluable insights that extend beyond the numerical data outlined in financial statements. It's a cornerstone for stakeholders seeking a deeper understanding of a company's performance, strategies, and potential risks. The MD&A facilitates a clear dialogue between management and investors, offering context, interpretation, and forward-looking perspectives in straightforward terms. In essence, MD&A bridges the gap between financial figures and the real-world dynamics shaping a company's operations and outlook.
This course is being offered to:
- Provide practical guidance on preparing and reviewing impactful MD&A reports;
- Focus on aligning financial data with narrative context;
- Empower participants to communicate a company's financial health effectively;
- Cover core principles, a comprehensive disclosure framework, and the art of tailoring MD&A content;
- Identify best practices; and
- Enhance participants' abilities to cater to primary users of financial reports.
This workshop aims to empower you with the skills and knowledge needed to prepare and review an effective MD&A. By exploring MD&A's objectives, principles, and elements, you will be better equipped to communicate the company's financial story to stakeholders and fulfill their reporting responsibilities effectively.
Topics Include:
- Principles-Based Disclosure: Understand how MD&A operates under a principles-based framework, allowing flexibility to describe financial matters impacting the company.
- Value Communication: Recognize the MD&A's potential as a powerful tool for management to communicate value creation, stewardship of resources, and alignment with strategic objectives.
- Inherent Limitations: Acknowledge the limitations of MD&A, as it captures information at a specific point in time and may not include all material information about the company.
- MD&A Objectives: develop a comprehensive framework consisting of key elements:
- Core businesses
- Objectives and strategy
- Capability to deliver results
- Results and outlook
- Key performance measures and indicators
- Disclosure Principles: Learn how MD&A fits into continuous disclosure and how to update information across interim and annual reports while avoiding duplication.
NOTE: No updates or changes were made to the 2025 version of this course. If you completed the course in 2024, please be advised the 2025 course material has not changed. If you have any questions, please contact pdevents@cpaontario.ca.
Key Takeaways
By the end of this course, participants should be able to:
- Enhance Understanding: Deepen participants' comprehension of MD&A as a tool to explain a company's financial condition, changes, and results of operations.
- Provide Context: Explore the role of MD&A in offering context to financial information, enabling stakeholders to analyze financial statements more effectively.
- Convey Quality and Variability: Equip participants with the skills to communicate information about the quality and potential variability of a company's earnings and cash flow, aiding stakeholders in assessing future performance.
- Avoid Boilerplate: Emphasize the importance of tailored and specific MD&A disclosure that reflects the unique circumstances of each registrant.
- Identify Tools and Resources Available: Leverage existing tools and resources to assist in developing effective MD&A reporting.
Who Will Benefit
Professionals who are directly involved in the preparation, analysis, and review of financial statements and disclosures.
Prerequisite(s)
A basic understanding of financial statements and prior exposure to financial reporting processes is helpful but not required.
How to Access the Course
This course is a live webinar. You must attend the live course to receive verifiable CPD hours. We recommend you join five minutes prior to the scheduled starting time. To get the full experience of this interactive course, use a computer that has video and microphone capabilities.
If available, course materials can be accessed 2 business days prior to the course and should be downloaded in advance.
Registration, cancellation, withdrawal and all other CPA Ontario PD policies can be found here.
Speaker(s)
Melanie E. Russell, CPA, CA, CBV, CFE, CIM, CFF, ABV – her current practice focuses on business valuations, litigation support and dispute analysis, financial/forensic investigations, corporate finance and education. She has qualified as an expert witness in the areas of valuation, forensic accounting, income analyses and loss of income calculations in a number of cases in the Ontario Court of Justice, the Ontario Superior Court and the Federal Court of Canada. She has also acted as an accounting expert in arbitration, mediation and other alternative dispute resolution proceedings (e.g., collaborative family practice), and negotiated a number of buy/sell transactions. She has taught at various institutions, authored various articles and professional material, and has had a number of years marking, authoring and co-ordinating professional examinations including the CICBV Membership Qualifying Examination.