Business & Objectives (AQA A Level Business): Exam Questions

Source B: Mishcon de Reya LLP

Mishcon de Reya LLP is a law firm. It advises businesses and wealthy individuals on disputes, property, corporate deals and private matters, and it is led by managing partner James Libson. It has offices in London, Cambridge and Oxford, and overseas in Hong Kong, Singapore and the United Arab Emirates. About 1 250 people work there, including more than 650 lawyers.

It is not a company. It is a limited liability partnership, which means it is owned by its members, the partners, rather than by shareholders. Members put capital into the firm when they join and take a share of the profit rather than a salary. Nobody outside the partnership owns any part of it.

The year to 31 March 2025 was the firm's best. Revenue rose 9% to £330 million and profit rose 14% to £110 million, the first time it has passed £100 million. The firm says it has tripled in size over the past decade. Its work during the year included advising Wayve on what it describes as Europe's largest artificial intelligence investment and defending O2 in a collusion claim.

Growing has meant admitting people. Sixteen new partners joined during the year and a further 27 people were promoted to partner from inside the firm, alongside 13 promotions to legal director. There are now more than 200 partners. As in any partnership, some members retire or leave each year, so membership grows by less than the number admitted.

That is the tension the firm is sitting with. In a partnership the profit is divided between the members, so every partner admitted is another share of the same pool. The firm now has to decide where its next stage of growth should come from: more partners in the United Kingdom, where it already has three offices and knows the market, or a bigger presence in Hong Kong, Singapore and the United Arab Emirates, where the offices exist but are small. Appendix F sets out the two options.

Source: information sourced from Mishcon de Reya LLP, results for 2024/25

Appendix D: Mishcon de Reya LLP selected results

The 2024 revenue and profit figures are those implied by the reported increases of 9% in revenue and 14% in profit.

Source: Mishcon de Reya LLP; 2024 partner number from analyst estimates

Appendix E: Mishcon de Reya LLP profit and members, analyst estimates

Source: Analyst

Assess whether Mishcon de Reya LLP's growth has made its individual members better off.

Calculate the percentage change in Mishcon de Reya LLP's number of members between 2024 and 2025 to support your answer.

Give your answer to one decimal place.

Source A: Games Workshop Group PLC

Games Workshop Group PLC designs, makes and sells fantasy miniatures, and the games and stories that go with them. Its main brand is Warhammer. The company is based at Willow Road in Nottingham, where it makes its models, and it is a public limited company whose shares are traded on the London Stock Exchange. Kevin Rountree is the chief executive. It employs about 3 000 people.

The company earns money in two quite different ways. Most of it comes from the core business: selling miniatures and books through its own shops, through independent retailers it calls trade accounts, and through its own website. The rest comes from licensing, which means letting other companies pay to use Warhammer characters and worlds in their own products, such as video games and television.

In the 52 weeks to 31 May 2026 the core business had its best year yet. Core revenue rose 10.9% to £626.8 million and core operating profit rose to £245.1 million. Licensing went the other way. Licensing revenue fell from £52.5 million to £32.9 million, and licensing operating profit fell from £49.5 million to £29.9 million.

Licensing matters more than its size suggests. It costs very little to run, because the company is selling permission rather than a product, so almost all of the revenue it brings in becomes profit.

Total revenue still reached a record £659.7 million and profit before tax a record £275.7 million. Earnings per share rose from 594.9p to 624.0p. Even so, the dividend paid during the year fell from 520p a share to 485p.

Games Workshop says its decisions are focused on long-term success rather than short-term gains, and that it intends to carry on making the best fantasy miniatures in the world forever.

Source: Games Workshop Group PLC results, 28 July 2026

Appendix B: Games Workshop Group PLC earnings, dividends and cash

• Earnings per share = 624.0p in 2026 (594.9p in 2025)

• Dividends per share declared and paid during the year = 485p in 2026 (520p in 2025)

• Net increase in cash before dividends paid = £210.3m in 2026 (£197.5m in 2025)

• Cash held at the end of the year = £182.9m

Source: Games Workshop Group PLC and Companies House

Appendix C: Extract from Games Workshop Group PLC's stated strategy

"Our ambitions remain clear: to make the best fantasy miniatures in the world, to engage and inspire our customers, and to sell our products globally at a profit. We intend to do this forever. Our decisions are focused on long-term success, not short-term gains."

"We nurture a craft based hobby. We understand that what we make may not appeal to everyone, so to recruit and retain customers we are absolutely focused on making our models the best in the world."

Source: Games Workshop Group PLC annual report, 2026

Assess whether Games Workshop Group PLC's focus on long-term success rather than short-term gains is in the interests of its shareholders.

Source A: Ridgeway Signs

Tomasz Nowak trades as Ridgeway Signs. He is a sole trader, which means the business is not separate from him in law: he owns everything it owns and he is personally responsible for everything it owes. He has no employees and works from a rented unit on a small industrial estate, with a van.

He designs, prints and fits signs for local businesses: shop fascias, vehicle graphics, banners, menu boards and exhibition displays. Almost all of his customers are other businesses within about twenty miles. Every job is quoted separately, and he wins roughly one quote in three.

Last year Ridgeway Signs took £85 000. Materials cost about 30p in every pound of work Tomasz does himself, so he keeps about 70p. Rent on the unit, the van, insurance and design software cost £21 000 a year whatever he sells.

The business has a shape to it. Appendix B shows sales month by month. October and November are his best months, because retailers refit before Christmas, and January and February are his worst.

There is one piece of work he cannot do. Large-format printing — vehicle wraps and big banners — needs a machine he does not own, so he sends those jobs to a trade printer in another town. Last year that work was worth £22 000 of his sales, but the trade printer takes most of it: Tomasz keeps only about 20p in the pound. He also turns away large jobs when the trade printer is busy.

A wide-format printer costs £24 000. Tomasz has £6 200 in the business account. Appendix C sets out what his accountant thinks would happen if he bought one.

Appendix A: Ridgeway Signs, summary of last year

Source: Analyst

Appendix B: Ridgeway Signs monthly sales

Source: Analyst

Assess whether working alone, with no employees, limits what Tomasz Nowak can achieve with Ridgeway Signs.

Source B: Brightpath Learning Ltd

Brightpath Learning Ltd is an online tutoring company set up six years ago by two former teachers, Aisha Rahman and Tom Petridis, who are its only shareholders and directors. It employs 31 people at its office in Leeds and works with about 400 self-employed tutors.

It sells two quite different things.

Live tutoring. A student books one-to-one lessons online with a subject specialist. A lesson costs the parent £38. Brightpath pays the tutor £26 and keeps £12. This is the larger part of the business and the part parents ask for by name, but it can only grow as fast as Brightpath can recruit and check tutors, and a tutor can only teach one student at a time.

The practice platform. A subscription costs £9 a month and gives a student unlimited access to Brightpath's own question banks, marked practice papers and progress tracking. It costs almost nothing to serve one more subscriber, because the material is already written. Fewer parents ask for it, because it is harder to explain than a lesson with a teacher.

Last year Brightpath took £7.4 million: £6.5 million from tutoring and £0.9 million from subscriptions. Fixed costs, covering the office, the 31 staff, the software and the marketing, came to £1.9 million.

The business is highly seasonal. Appendix E shows lessons booked month by month: demand builds through the autumn, rises sharply after Christmas and peaks in April, then collapses once exams finish. Aisha and Tom have to pay the office and the staff through June, July and August whatever happens.

They now have to decide where to put next year's money. Appendix F sets out the two options.

Appendix D: Brightpath Learning Ltd, summary of last year

Source: Analyst

Appendix E: Brightpath Learning Ltd lessons booked by month

Source: Analyst

Assess whether Brightpath Learning Ltd's seasonal pattern of demand makes planning more difficult for Aisha Rahman and Tom Petridis.

Source B: Dunelm Group plc

Dunelm Group plc sells homewares and furniture: curtains, bedding, cookware, lighting, storage, sofas. It is a public limited company and it sells through large out-of-town stores and through its website and app.

In the year to 28 June 2025 revenue rose 3.8% to £1.77 billion and profit before tax rose 2.7% to £211 million, with the margin slipping slightly to 11.9%. Its share of the combined homewares and furniture market rose from 7.7% to 7.9%, and the number of active customers, meaning people who have bought something within the last year, rose slightly.

The change underneath those figures is where the customer shops. Digital sales are now 40% of everything Dunelm sells, up from 37% the year before. Appendix E shows how that share has moved over five years.

The complication is that digital and stores are not two separate businesses with two separate customers. The same person browses online and buys in store, or measures an item in store and orders at home, or buys online and returns to a store. A sofa is rarely bought without being sat on. A set of tea towels rarely needs a visit. Dunelm has to work out what a customer actually wants from each part of the business, when that customer does not think of them as separate at all.

It now has to decide where the next investment goes. Appendix F sets out the options.

Source: information sourced from Dunelm Group plc preliminary results for the year ended 28 June 2025

Appendix D: Dunelm Group plc selected results

Source: Dunelm Group plc

Appendix E: Dunelm digital share of sales, analyst estimates

Source: Analyst

Assess whether Dunelm Group plc should treat its digital sales and its stores as one business or as two.

Source B: Home Instead Ltd

Home Instead Limited arranges care for older people in their own homes: help with washing and dressing, meals, medication, shopping and company. It has been trading in the United Kingdom since 2005 from an office near Warrington, and it is owned by an American company.

Home Instead does not provide the care itself. It is a franchisor. Local business owners buy the right to run a Home Instead office in a particular area, and in return they use the name, the training and the systems, and pay a fee on everything they sell. Those franchisees recruit and employ the carers. This is why the company's accounts look so unusual for a care business: turnover of £19.5 million but only 64 employees, because almost everybody who does the work is employed by somebody else.

The market is growing. The Office for National Statistics projects that the number of people in the UK at state pension age will rise from 12.0 million in mid-2022 to 13.7 million by mid-2032, an increase of 13.8%, while the population as a whole grows by 7.3%. Older people are becoming a larger share of the country, and most of them would prefer to stay in their own homes.

The company's own finances moved in two directions during 2025. Turnover rose 7.9% to £19.5 million. But cash at the bank fell by 28.8% to £3.12 million and net assets fell by 10.8% to £5.10 million.

Home Instead now has a choice about how to grow. It could recruit more franchisees to cover the areas it does not reach. Or it could buy back some territories and run them itself, employing the carers directly. Appendix E shows what a typical franchise costs to run and Appendix F shows the break-even chart for one.

Source: information sourced from Companies House and the Office for National Statistics, 2026

Appendix D: Home Instead Ltd selected financial data

Source: Companies House

Appendix E: Information on one Home Instead franchise

Source: Analyst

Appendix F: Break-even chart for one Home Instead franchise

Source: Analyst

Home Instead Ltd has decided to buy back some territories and run them itself, employing the carers directly.

Evaluate whether Home Instead Ltd should finance buying back territories from its own cash or with a bank loan.

Source B: Ashgrove Print Ltd

Ashgrove Print Ltd is a commercial printer in Dewsbury. Ken Ashgrove started it in 1994 after fifteen years at a firm that lost its only large customer and closed in a fortnight, and he told his daughter Nadia more than once that he built Ashgrove Print Ltd so that nobody would ever again be able to tell him what to charge. Nadia Ashgrove has run it since 2021. It is a private limited company and employs 34 people.

The work comes in two kinds. Long-run work is leaflets and shelf-edge cards for Fenwold Stores, a supermarket group: high volume, printed to a price Fenwold Stores fixes, and paid for in 74 days. It brought in £2 472 000 last year and cost £2 100 000 in paper, ink, plates and press time. Short-run work is menus, packaging, programmes and art prints for about 300 small local customers: low volume, priced job by job, and paid for in 21 days, often on collection. It brought in £1 648 000 and cost £784 000.

Across all its customers, Ashgrove Print Ltd waits an average of 53 days to be paid. It buys paper from two mills on 30-day terms. Its agreed terms with its own smaller suppliers, the plate makers, the bindery, the finishers and the courier, are also 30 days. Last year it paid them on average in 61 days. Its overdraft facility is £150 000 and it was £96 000 into it at the year end.

Fenwold Stores has now offered Ashgrove Print Ltd all of its print work on a three-year contract. It would need a new press costing £340 000, which the bank will lend against. Appendix F sets out that future and the one Nadia Ashgrove has been building towards instead.

Appendix D: Ashgrove Print Ltd, income statement for last year

Source: Analyst

Appendix E: Ashgrove Print Ltd, where the revenue is and where the profit is

Source: Analyst

Appendix F: Data for two futures for Ashgrove Print Ltd

Source: Analyst

Appendix F sets out two futures for Ashgrove Print Ltd.

Evaluate both futures and recommend which one would be the better for Ashgrove Print Ltd.

Source B: Foxhall Creamery Ltd

Foxhall Creamery Ltd makes hard cheese on the Shropshire border. It is a private limited company owned in equal shares by Kate Foxhall, who is 61, and Owen Ridd, who is 58, and it employs 48 people. Revenue last year was £6 800 000, sold to farm shops, delicatessens and independent grocers, none of whom takes more than 4% of output.

The cheese has to sit. The youngest thing Foxhall Creamery Ltd sells has been in the store for nine months, and its best-known cheese comes out at fourteen. Every wheel in the store is money already spent and not yet earned, and there are two rooms of them.

The accounts look reassuring. At the year end the company held £1 240 000 of inventory, was owed £680 000 by customers and had £410 000 in the bank, against £520 000 owed to suppliers, £118 000 in VAT and PAYE, and £194 000 of the bank loan falling due within the year. The loan stands at £1 460 000 in total, and the financial objective for this year is to reduce it by £200 000.

Foxhall Creamery Ltd values the cheese in its store at what the milk, the labour and the power have cost. A wheel that has been maturing for thirteen months appears in the accounts at the same figure as it did on the day it was made, although the price it will fetch has roughly doubled in the meantime.

The company needs a third maturing store, which will cost £900 000. It can pay for it out of the bank balance and this year's retained profit, or it can borrow again.

There is a larger question behind that one. Kate Foxhall wants to retire within five years. A cheese wholesaler has offered £4 900 000 for the company. The alternative the two of them have been reading about is an employee ownership trust, which would buy the business on behalf of the 48 staff and pay Kate Foxhall and Owen Ridd out of future profits over about seven years.

Appendix D: Foxhall Creamery Ltd, current assets and current liabilities

Source: Analyst

Appendix E: Foxhall Creamery Ltd's current assets

Source: Analyst

Appendix F: Data for two objectives for the next five years

Source: Analyst

Appendix F sets out two objectives for Foxhall Creamery Ltd for the next five years.

Evaluate both objectives and recommend which one would be the better for Foxhall Creamery Ltd.