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Department of Business and Economics

PwC Award Ceremony Summer Semester 2022

PwC Award Winners and Organizers from the TU Dortmund University and PwC © Faculty WiWi​/​TU Dortmund
Lukas Jahn (PwC), Henrik Leysner (PwC), Moritz Brechmann, Jan Feidieker, Alina Fee Bieniek, Patrick Schönenberg, Dr. André Jungen (WiWi Faculty), Prof. Dr. Christiane Pott (WiWi Faculty), Marcus Finke (PwC)

On November 22, 2022, the auditing and consulting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers awarded the best theses in the field of accounting at the Faculty of Business and Economics at TU Dortmund University. For the 28th award ceremony, the prize winners were selected from all students who wrote their final thesis in the subjects of corporate accounting and controlling, international accounting and auditing, and corporate taxation in the summer semester of 2022.

The bachelor thesis "Effects of rising inflation on investment valuation" by Moritz Brechmann states that inflation changes payment surpluses and the nominal interest rate. In addition, inflation creates spurious profits that can lead to a financing gap. As a result, the investment valuation changes, whereby the amount of the investment valuation depends significantly on how well rising costs can be compensated by higher sales prices.

The bachelor thesis "The Capitalization Rate in Company Valuation - A Critical Review of the Requirements of IDW S1" by Jan Feidieker is dedicated to the capitalization interest rate as an elementary component of the future earnings method. Since the capitalization rate has a significant influence on the resulting company values, its correct determination is of enormous importance. In this paper, the requirements of the IDW S1 for the determination of the capitalization rate are critically evaluated against the background of the practical implementation and the requirements of the IDW S1 for the capitalization rate in an objectified company valuation.

Alina Fee Bieniek's master's thesis "Implementing Robotic Process Automation (RPA) - An exploratory study in German companies" first showed in a literature review that the topics of auditing, role differentiation in accounting, and data analytics are among the more popular branches of RPA research, while research that explores RPA in logistics, sales, and other intra-company interfaces between departments is lacking. The interview analysis shows that all interviewed companies use task automation to some extent, although not all companies see the need to integrate fully automated processes. The experts agree that automating report generation is very useful for their company, as employees now have time to devote to other tasks.

Patrick Schönenberg wrote his master's thesis on "The role of corporate communications via digital channels - An investigation of stakeholder-related social media interaction." Twitter profiles were identified for 38 of the 40 DAX companies and their Twitter data was systematically obtained. It was shown that the tweets published on Twitter as part of corporate communications address a variety of socially relevant topics and that companies position themselves on current events. The Corona pandemic also significantly influenced corporate communications immediately after the pandemic was declared, both in the selection of topics and in the sentiment of the tweets published.  

We congratulate the winners and wish them all the best for the future!