Project Summary: COMPREHENSIVE PROJECT As part of the grade evaluation, students will prepare a written research paper focused on a particular company of choice. Students will choose a Fortune 500 company (see http://fortune.com/fortune500/ for a complete list of companies) on which they will address the following topics: Provide a brief overview of the company (week 1 milestone) Describe the strategy of the business (week 1 milestone) Perform a SWOT analysis (week 7 milestone) Discuss the financial performance of the company over the last 3 years (week 7 milestone) Observe the companys stock price performance over the last 3 years and offer your thoughts on why it has trended up or down in this time (week 7 milestone) Evaluate the use of debt as a means of financing for this company Critique the companys dividend and share repurchase policy to the extent it has either Students should make use of some of the following resources in preparing their written papers: Company website Company Annual Report (Form 10-K) Yahoo! Finance Wall Street Journal NY Times business section