One intense week, on one page. One topic a day, taught right here — then the real past-exam question that goes with it, ready to answer and get marked on. You pick the week. Just show up seven days running.
The week follows the paper as it is really examined: interpreting the numbers, judging an acquisition, your weakest area, hedging, unbundling, then international risk. Each day: a short brief that teaches the topic, then genuine past-exam questions, to time. Twenty-one of the twenty-two markable questions in the AFM bank are discussion questions, not calculations. Pick any week before the exam — start on a Monday, or start today. Days 1 to 6 earn the marks; Day 7 is deliberately light, so if you run it as your final week it lands the day before the exam.
Draft in a doc, paste in, keep your draft. There's no save-as-draft, and you'll want your answer again on Day 6.
Next morning, read yesterday's marking before you touch today's topic. It's the cheapest teaching you'll ever get.
Each day tells you the one thing to look for in the model answer. Open it hunting, not browsing.
Day 6, 4pm: your lowest-scoring answer gets its second attempt. That resubmission arrow is the week's proudest number.
Day 1 is open below in full — the other six days unlock with the Sprint.
Five-ish minutes. It follows your mistakes — get one wrong and it digs deeper there — and it decides which area your Day 3 question targets. Answer honestly, tag how sure you were, and it'll tell you the difference between what you don't know and what you don't know you don't know.
Six questions to start — one per Sprint topic — then it follows whatever you get wrong. Ten to fifteen questions at most.
Ask an AFM student what the paper is and they will tell you the maths. Adjusted present value. Free cash flow to equity. Option pricing. Hedge arithmetic. That is where the revision hours go, and it is why so many people walk out of AFM feeling they did the hard part and still miss.
So look at what is actually markable. Across the whole Ultra bank for this paper there are twenty-two genuine past-exam questions, and twenty-one of them are discussion questions. Discuss. Explain. Advise. Evaluate. Recommend. Comment. Exactly one asks you to calculate anything — and the part that follows it is today's question.
Read the requirement below carefully, because it is the whole paper in one sentence: advise how the shareholders would view the acquisition based on the results of your calculations, and discuss the assumptions underlying them. The numbers are handed to you. The marks are for what you say next.
This is the gap that decides AFM scripts. A candidate gets the FCFE valuation exactly right, writes "therefore the acquisition creates value for shareholders", and scores almost nothing — because knowing the number and explaining what it means to a board are different skills, and only one of them gets practised by doing another calculation.
Two things earn here. First, whose view is it? The requirement names the shareholders, so the answer is about what happens to their shares — the gain or loss per share, whether it is real or arithmetic, whether it survives if the synergies do not arrive. Second, the assumptions. Every valuation in AFM rests on a growth rate, a discount rate and a synergy figure that somebody guessed. Naming which assumption the answer is most sensitive to, and saying what you would want to see before believing it, is where the analysis marks live.
There are also professional skills marks on this requirement, awarded for analysis. Five of the twenty-two questions in the bank carry a separate professional award of up to five marks, and they are given for how the answer is built rather than what it knows. That is the second reason today matters: you cannot assess your own analysis. You know what you meant, so a vague sentence reads as insightful to you and as filler to a marker.
When you reveal the model answer tomorrow, look for one thing: count how many sentences restate the numbers and how many interpret them. The ratio will surprise you — then count yours the same way.
Genuine ACCA past exam · June 2026 · Q3(b)(ii) · Rushock Co / Trimpley Co
You do not need to redo part (b)(i) — the calculations are given in the scenario. Answer the part that carries the marks.
Nine of the twenty-two questions in the AFM bank are about acquisitions — and this one says outright that no calculations are required. Suitability means strategic fit, and what would make each target hard to buy.
Genuine ACCA past exam · June 2024 Q3(a) · 6 marks · ⏱ 12 min
Deliberate practice on your weakest area — and the Day 0 diagnostic above decides which: acquisition strategy, business and financial risk, treasury, or synergies.
Genuine ACCA past exam · your diagnostic's pick · 5–12 marks
The biggest question of the week. Twelve marks for answering the directors' queries on hedging — and at least one director is confidently wrong. Five of those marks are professional.
Genuine ACCA past exam · December 2023 Q3(b) · 7 marks + 5 professional · ⏱ 22 min
Everyone revises acquisitions; far fewer revise the opposite. Sell-off versus demerger, and why shareholders would actually benefit — both requirements from the same June 2026 question.
Genuine ACCA past exam · June 2026 Q2(a) + Q2(b) · 9 marks · ⏱ 18 min
Protectionism, customs unions and political risk — the least arithmetic part of AFM and consistently the worst answered. The marks are in what you would do about the risk, not in naming it.
Genuine ACCA past exam · June 2024 Q1(a) + December 2023 Q1(v) · 12 marks · ⏱ 24 min
The deliberately light final day: what to re-read, what to ignore, and the three rules that decide AFM papers — 1.8 minutes a mark, answer the verb, and never just restate the number.
Each day's brief takes ten minutes to read. The question takes the rest of the session. That ratio is the whole method — the marks are earned in the doing, not the reading.
1.8 minutes per mark. Every question above has its timer printed on it. Set it, and when it rings, stop — in the real exam the next question's first marks are the easiest ones left on the paper.
Underline the verb. "Identify and explain" pays twice — the name and the reason. "Recommend" wants an action somebody could take on Monday. And quote the scenario: generic answers score generic marks, which is to say almost none.
You cannot mark your own AFM answer objectively — everyone gives themselves the benefit of the doubt. Submit each day's answer and let the feedback tell you what an examiner would actually pay for it.
Buy the Sprint and you get this whole week unlocked — all seven days, taught in full — plus full Ultra access on AFM until your exam on Friday 11 September, set up on your aCOWtancy account the same day. That's the entire AFM Ultra bank of 22 genuine past-exam questions, every one markable, marked seven days a week and back within 48 hours, with two attempts at every question.
Run your sprint any week you like — all seven days are on one page from the moment it opens, so nothing is drip-fed and there is no daily email to wait for. Buy early and you get more runway to resubmit and improve — access lasts until exam day either way. New to aCOWtancy? Use the same email at checkout as your aCOWtancy account (or create your account after buying with the email you paid with).
Get the Sprint — £99Already bought? Your access code is in your confirmation — open the full Sprint.
Already a Premium or Ultra member on AFM? Don't buy this — the Sprint week is included for you. Message us in the chat on acowtancy.com and we'll send you a link that opens the whole week straight away.
The AFM textbook, past papers and practice questions are on aCOWtancy for every topic in this sprint. From an ACCA Platinum Approved Learning Partner.
Get the Sprint — £99