CFA® L2 — Financial Statement Analysis
Inter-corporate investments, business combinations, employee compensation, multinational operations, quality of financial reports — where the heavy lifting begins.
Quick info
- Layer
- Professional Certifications
- Track
- CFA® Level 2
- Estimated hours
- 50 hrs
- Chapters
- 2
- Exam body
- CFA Institute
- Cost on Trustner
- Free
Every chapter below has Foundation, Deep Dive, and Advanced material — read in any order, expand each chapter to see the full content.
About this course
CFA L2 FSA is the largest topic (10-15%). Focus areas: intercorporate investments, employee compensation/pensions, multinational operations, evaluating financial reporting quality. Vignettes ask you to recompute earnings or ratios under different accounting choices.
Who this is for
- CFA L2 candidates.
- Equity analysts and credit analysts.
- Auditors and accounting professionals.
What you'll learn
- Intercorporate investments — equity method, consolidation, fair value
- Employee compensation — pensions and stock-based compensation
- Multinational operations — currency translation
- Quality of financial reports — earnings management, accruals
Course material — 2 chapters
Each chapter offers three tiers — Foundation for the core concept, Deep Dive for worked examples and practitioner depth, and Advanced for edge cases and exam tips. Click any chapter to expand.
- 1Reading 1
Intercorporate investments — equity method vs consolidation
- Investment classifications: financial assets, associate, subsidiary
- Equity method
- Consolidation
- Joint ventures
✓ Full chapter — read, examples, FAQ, MCQs - 2Reading 2
Pension accounting — defined benefit obligations
- Defined benefit vs defined contribution
- Projected benefit obligation (PBO)
- Funded status
- Pension expense components
✓ Full chapter — read, examples, FAQ, MCQs
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CFA® L2 — Economics
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CFA® L2 — Corporate Issuers
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CFA® L2 — Equity Investments
Equity valuation models — DDM, FCFE, residual income, market-based — applied to actual companies. Item-set heavy.