Business English Essential Glossary

Accountability and Corporate Governance

• Accountability:

  • Definition: Being responsible for what one is doing and being able to give a satisfactory reason for it.

• Administration:

  • Context: Refers to two distinct business concepts.
  • First Meaning: The organisation and running of a business.
  • Second Meaning (Going into Administration): Refers to a business going bankrupt, enabling its creditors to make contact to attempt to claim any money they are owed.

Financial Reporting and Statements

• Accounts:

  • Requirement: Businesses are obligated to produce an annual set of accounts.
  • Stock Exchange Obligation: If a business is listed on the stock exchange, it is additionally required to show half-year profits (which provides information regarding profits six months into the financial year).

• Audit:

  • Definition: An official inspection of a company's, or individual's, accounts.

• Balance Sheet:

  • Definition: A 'snapshot' of a company's assets, liabilities, and capital at a particular point in time.

Asset Management, Valuation, and Financing

• Assets:

  • Definition: Property that has value owned by a company.

• Benchmarking:

  • Definition: Checking a company's standards by comparing them with certain criteria, such as a competitor's activities.

• Bid:

  • Definition: To offer to pay a particular price for something.

• Bond:

  • Definition: An agreement made when money is borrowed from an investor at a set rate of interest, which is repaid over a set period of time.
  • Risk Rating System: Bonds are rated across a spectrum from the safest rated as AAA to the riskiest rated as D.