Company: General Motors Company
You should compare with Ford Motor Company
You can find this two campanies' financial statement on EDGAR

Using the analytical tools each of you will learn, each student will prepare an analysis of a public company.  The company will be evaluated from the perspective of both fixed income securities (e.g., would you buy the bonds in the medium to long-term?) and equity securities (e.g., would you buy or sell the stock in the medium to long-term?).

Approaches to the analysis should include:

Current state of the financial health of the company
Trends in the financial health over recent years and potentially into the future
Comparison of the subject company with competitors and/or industry sector
Analysis of the subject company’s industry sector
o    Relative strengths or weaknesses
o    Factors affecting the industry such as product, technical innovation, regulation, economic cycles, etc.
Assessing the company’s position within the industry context
o    Is it a leader?
o    Does it have a clear advantage vis a vis other industry participants?
o    Is it subject to extreme competition or pricing pressure?

The company paper analysis is considered to be a research paper.  Remember that work that you use from other authors MUST be referenced.  Since it is assumed that you are not an authority on the topic that you are writing, it is expected that this paper is an overview of many different sources of information.  These sources must be credited to the author using the APA format.  This is your paper and not the cut and paste of someone else’s work.  The internet has led to a false sense of what research is all about.  Those new to research tend to think that it means spending an afternoon surfing the internet and then an afternoon cutting from the material available.  Keep in mind the internet is (1) not quality oriented (some information is good and some is bad – the internet does not know the difference) and (2) the internet is Not the sole source of research.  In particular, sources such as Wikipedia are the works of individual submitters which are not reviewed for accuracy, etc.  Therefore, these sources are not reliable and should not be used in academic research papers.  Keep in mind that the Boston University Library, as well as your local, state, and national (US Library of Congress) libraries has extensive on-line services.  Please use them.