Since the turn of the century, financial statements have been a common topic among investors, accounting standards board members, and business professionals. Although Enron may be the most recognizable name when it comes to financial scandal, there have been many other similar cases throughout the 2000s. Some examples include companies such as WorldCom, Tyco, Freddie Mac, and AIG. Many of these scandals were made possible due to these companies’ complex financial statements. Over the past few years the FASB (Financial Accounting Standards Board) has been working diligently to put into place standards for financial statements that will hopefully improve their efficiency and effectiveness, thus eliminating shady occurrences in companies’ financial …show more content…
A quote that perfectly sums up the problem that investors face when dealing with disclosures states, “The sheer quantity of financial disclosures has become so excessive that we’ve diminished the overall value of these disclosures” (KPMG, p.2). This was the case when examining Cummins past five years of financial statements. By comparing the number of pages in Cummins 10ks over the last five years, it can be seen that Cummins has eliminated over 20 pages of information since 2009. A large majority of this change is attributed to Cummins efforts over this time span to more efficiently convey their disclosures in a way that even inexperienced investors can understand. Although Cummins has made significant strides, there is still plenty of room for improvement. One way to reduce disclosure overload and complexity even further would be to utilize tables and graphics rather than lengthy textual formats to convey financial statements. A second possibility would be to only disclose risk factors that are unique to Cummins, rather than all of the risk factors affecting the entire industry as well. By utilizing either of these ideas, Cummins could enhance their financial statements even further for …show more content…
Between 2006 and 2010, the FASB has adopted thirteen different disclosure requirements to their Accounting Standards Codification. By adding these requirements, they ensure that companies cannot mislead their investors, thus benefiting investors to make informed decisions. Although this change is viewed in a positive light, there are also different costs associated with stricter regulation of disclosures. The most prominent of these costs are associated with implementing such changes. By making changes to the FASB’s Accounting Standards Codification, companies now are forced to adhere to these changes. Often times in order to follow these changes companies are forced to hire experts in order to ensure they are following the new standards correctly. This can end up being both expensive as well as time consuming, which can be detrimental to a company’s
Cummins is a very well-known company. The company was built on the idea of the diesel engine. Many different trucks and some cars are using diesel engines in this day and age. Some of the vehicles using the diesel engine are the Ram trucks, Chevrolet 2500 HD, Chevrolet 3500 HD, Ford F-250, and the Ford F-350.
Following the Great Depression, there was a dire need for regulation and full disclosure of accounting records within the securities markets. “Some feel that insufficient and misleading financial statement information led to inflated stock prices and that this contributed to the stock market crash and the subsequent depression” (Spiceland 9). When investors did not have accurate financial information at their disposal, they were prone to making poor investing decisions. The Securities & Exchange Acts of 1933 and 1934 were the first pieces of legislature to require public companies to be audited quarterly and annually. These acts were designed to restore investor confidence in the markets.
Businesses have to adapt the shift
Board of Directors There are 8 members on the Cummins Inc. Board of Directors. There are 7 outsiders and 1 insider on the board. The only insider is N. Thomas Linebarger. Linebarger is the current Chairman and CEO of Cummins Inc.
These disclosures generally suggest that the corporation’s reports were audited and that the statements conformed to the appropriate legislations and standards (Virgin Australia Holdings Ltd 2013, 166). In relation to social and environment disclosure that is not regulated, the corporation has referred to appropriate initiatives like the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) (Virgin Australia Holdings Ltd 2013, 164). Its corporate governance disclosures covered mainly on the internal business control such as the structure and role of the board of directors, remuneration, responsible and ethical decision-making, integrity in financial reporting, recognising and managing risk, and disclosure and the rights of shareholders (Virgin Australia Holdings Ltd 2013,
ACC 201 Final Project Part I Accounting Cycle Report Vanessa Ann Williams Southern New Hampshire University The accountant cycle has really impacted me to gain insight on the financial side of Peyton Company. In the accountant cycle, there are many particular directions involve determining the growth of the company such as steps, role, omission and financial statements. It’s important to apply every step from the accountant cycle to make a financial critical decision in the long run. This report will have a breakdown of how to apply the accountant cycle for Peyton Company to be aware of future financial decisions to keep the company holding strong.
For the Huffman Trucking Company, strategic planning has been an important part of their functions for over 60 years. For a company like Huffman Trucking, financial planning is extremely important to maintain their continued growth and their overall health in the long term. When analyzing the financial statements for the last three years we looked and three separate types of financial statements: the income statement, balance sheets, and the cash flow budget, we will also try and make assumptions to identify the various risks involved in a business like Huffman Trucking. When looking at the various financial statements we attempt also review the cash flow statements and attempt to make recommendations on the implementation of various short-term working capital strategies on the long term cash flows, try and find an explanation of different corporate risk mitigation techniques capital budgeting, and make an analysis of what effect capital structure on strategic financial planning, and how it works to affect risks.
The IASB and FASB are poised to adopt a joint standard on revenue recognition. This new world standard would take an asset-liability approach, such as that of pre-convergence IFRS, while containing more specific guidance than IFRS users are accustomed to seeing, taking a cue from the GAAP standards of the United States. Under the new standard, preparers would recognize revenue based on the contracts that they hold with
Traditionally, pro forma earnings are lampooned as “earnings before the bad stuff”, which are lower than the figure according the GAAP. Companies may present to the public their earnings and results of operations on the basis of methodologies other than GAAP. And this presentation in the earnings release is often referred to as “pro forma” financial information. Many companies were thought to be using pro forma figures not only to exclude one-time charges, but also to strip put recurrent costs and other elements that they claimed concealed their “true” performance. “Pro forma” financial information can serve useful purposes.
Lockheed Martin’s shareholders are classified as dominant stakeholders because they have power to affect decisions and wield the authority to do so. This power originates from the shareholders ability to make Lockheed base its business decisions around earning money for its investors, thereby validating their legitimacy to the company as rightful owners. Despite these attributes, shareholders have little to no impact on most of the corporation’s daily management and have a low threat capacity and necessary cooperation level; they merely own the stocks. Given shareholder's status as type two stakeholders Lockheed Martin needs to monitor stock
Having different accounting standards in the world is a problem for multinational public limited companies and investors in order to be able to compare and evaluate financial statements (Doupnik & Perera, 2009). Due to the economic and financial scandals and meltdown in recent years, the pressure has been increased on some countries such as United States. Therefore, it must eliminate the gap between the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) and US Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP). The world of accounting diversity will have consequences on such changes, and the standard convergence of US GAAP with International Financial Reporting Standards also largely affect corporate management, investment, stock market, accounting personnel and accounting standard setters. In addition, the convergence of accounting standards will change the approach for international accounting harmonization to CPA and CFO, it affects the quality of international accounting quality standards and the effort made toward GAAP and IFRS convergence
Conclusion After reviewing the information obtained through this report, it highlights the lack of regulation and their accounting practices which took place within Lehman Brothers. The accounting practices that were used within the bank were set by the tone at the top and show that the CFO’s during the 2000’s and going forward had plenty of knowledge of the Repo 105 transactions and had no great will to do anything about. The thinking at the time seemed to be, that the company had used this accounting practice for so long, that if there was something wrong it would have come up by now no point rocking the boat.
They have produced a flood of various regulatory and legislative responses. Along with the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 and other similar regulations issued by the SEC now the New York Stock Exchange and the NASD both compel corporate CEOs and CFOs to certify the accuracy of financial statements filed with the SEC. This requires listed companies to genuinely adopt corporate governance guidelines or codes of ethics which specifically address the conduct of senior management, directors or officers. It forbids corporations to extend unnecessary credit to their directors or officers and also provides for forfeiture of profits and bonuses from sale of company stock if in case restatements have been made solely as a result of “misconduct” in financial reporting.
For public investors, they can use information disclosure to understand the impact of the dual-class share structure on the value of the company's stock and thus decide whether to invest. For the shareholders of the company before setting up the structure, especially the external shareholders, although such a structure should be approved by more than half of the independent directors and more than half of the shareholders, the shareholders may also suffer from follow-up voting if information disclosure is incomplete, especially in the situation where public investors have weak judgment ability and mature institutional investors are not much. However, the mandatory information disclosure system cannot solve all problems. Since information disclosure is a unilateral act of the company, its authenticity and accuracy are debatable. Therefore, some scholars believe that information sources should be broadened to use more comprehensive information to detect the information disclosed by the company.
Introduction The main objective of the paper is to develop a report for a shareholder that will interpret financial statements of Tesco Plc. for 2013-2014. The shareholder is specifically concerned about the fraudulent reporting. In this way, the paper will explain the reason of income statement and statement of financial position.