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Whitehall Shareholder Network (WSN)

The Whitehall Shareholder Network was set up to bring together government officials from shareholder teams across all Government Shareholding Departments with an aim to assist with the sharing of best work practice and encourage the communication of relevant information across teams.

The aim of the Network is to improve the level of commercial and financial skills within Government Shareholder Teams. To achieve this, the Shareholder Executive has developed a suite of training courses which provide participants with the skills required to function effectively in a shareholder role.

As well as the regular tutor based courses, we have been working with our training providers, Kaplan Financial, to develop a number of e-learning packages to supplement the existing tutor based training modules. The new e-learning elements of the programme include:

Finance Awareness This e-learning course aims to explain simply and clearly what the key financial statements mean, how they work and relate to each other and how your actions as a manager affect them and your business. Completing this e-learning will help prepare students who choose to attend the Understanding Financial Information course due to be held on 17 September.

Building and Testing Corporate Strategy This e-learning course will introduce students to much of the theory of strategic analysis and choice and will help prepare students who choose to attend the Strategic Analysis and Strategic Choice course due to be held on 10 November.

Managing Shareholder Value This e-learning course will be available to those individuals particularly interested in learning more about some of the key value performance metrics used by Shareholders such as Economic Profit and Free Cash Flow and will help prepare students attending the Shareholder Value Analysis course due to be held on 9 February.

The tutorial based courses are:

Course title Brief description of course
Understanding Financial Information
(Finance Awareness e-learning package to be completed prior to attendance) 		This module provides a fundamental understanding of finance jargon, primary financial statements and how to analyse financial information. The Profit and Loss Account, Balance Sheet and Cash Flow Statement are all covered together with some core ratios for financial analysis.
Strategic analysis and strategic choice
(Building and Testing Corporate Strategy e-learning package to be completed prior to attendance.) 		This module explores a number of strategic tools, analytical models and prompts that can be used to make your analytical thinking more effective. It includes internal analysis of a businesses position, competitive analysis of the market it operates within, and how to inform better strategic choice.
Shareholder Value Analysis
(Managing Shareholder Value e-learning package to be completed prior to attendance) 		This module helps delegates to understand what value really means for a business, and the value-creating potential of strategies. The definition of true economic value is explored, and some tools are presented that will help delegates understand how shareholder value is created and measured. In particular the concept of Economic Profit is dealt with.
Major Business Transactions This module workshop provides a practical guide of how to analyse major business transactions such as mergers, acquisitions and capital projects. It explores key aspects of investment appraisal, modelling and sensitivity analysis
Spotting the signs of stress in a business This module introduces a number of financial tools, analytical models and prompts that will enable delegates to assess the financial health of a business, and to inform the decision as to when it might be entering a period of stress.

Existing members of the WSN will automatically be registered to access this e-learning package via the Shareholder Executive's website (www.shareholderexecutive.gov.uk).

If any new government official join one of the shareholding teams and would like access to the e-learning packages, please send an e-mail to the WSN mailbox whitehallshareholdernetwork@bis.gsi.gov.uk with your details