EXAMINER’S GENERAL COMMENTS In my sincere opinion, it was expected that the pass rate of this paper would be well over 50 percent, considering the straightforwardness of the questions contained in the paper, in addition to the fact that all questions were within the syllabus requirement of this application level of the Institute’s examination. However, to my utmost surprise, this wasn’t the case. Even though, the performance is the best since the inception of this syllabus, it appeared to me that quite a large number of the candidates did not prepare adequately for the examination. In fact, it behooves on students at this level to exhibit clear understanding of the fundamental principles underpinning Corporate Strategy, Ethics and Governance, considering the fact that students should have been exposed to majority of the issues contained therein from other courses. Candidates who do not fully grasp the contents in the other subject areas, in addition to failure to adequately prepare, would encounter obvious problems in securing a pass in this paper 2.6. This could be a reason why the pass rate in the CSEG paper has not been very encouraging over the years. Notwithstanding, this particular examination saw the best performance.

STANDARD OF THE PAPER Overall, the standard of the paper was high and reflected the exact contents of the syllabus. Further, it could be described as comparable to the papers previously administered by the Institute. Notwithstanding, the demands of the case study questions was slightly below the standard of those administered in previous examinations. The questions in relation to the case study did not absolutely reflect the depth of information contained in the case study. For example, there could have been questions demanding the use of the Poter’s Five Competitive Forces framework, since the case study contained in-depth information in relation to it. The mark allocations reflected the weightings in the syllabus. However, a major weakness of the paper was that questions relating to corporate strategy (i.e. strategic management aspect) concentrated on only formulation and implementation phases with no question bothering on strategy evaluation and control phase. In my candid opinion, none of the questions could be considered as too loaded for candidates to handle. However, I found that some of the marks allocated to some questions were ‘over-generous’, considering the demands of the questions. For example, question one (1d and 1e) put together should not be more than ten (10) marks in my estimation. The marks allocated to these questions, put together, was (14), which I consider to be too much, especially also considering the fact that the demand of both questions wasPage 2 of 22 somewhat similar. It was, however, quite disturbing that the number of candidates that could answer both questions correctly could be less than 50 percent. In my estimation, both questions were so basic and any candidate writing this paper should have easily scored more than half of the total (14) marks allocated. There were no ambiguities/errors/typing problems that adversely affected performance in the examinations. Overall, all the six (6) questions administered were of high standard at the level of examination.