Following the Money: The Enron Failure and the State of Corporate Disclosure

Description

A few years ago, Americans held out their systems of corporate governance and financial disclosure as models to be emulated by the rest of the world. But in late 2001 U.S. policymakers and corporate leaders found themselves facing the largest corporate accounting scandals in American history. The spectacular collapses of Enron and Worldcom—as well as the discovery of accounting irregularities at other large U.S. companies—seemed to call into question the efficacy of the entire system of corporate governance in the United States.

In response, Congress quickly enacted a comprehensive package of reform measures in what has come to be known as the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. The New York Stock Exchange and the NASDAQ followed by making fundamental changes to their listing requirements. The private sector acted as well. Accounting firms—watching in horror as one of their largest, Arthur Andersen, collapsed after a criminal conviction for document shredding—tightened their auditing procedures. Stock analysts and ratings agencies, hit hard by a series of disclosures about their failings, changed their practices as well.

Will these reforms be enough? Are some counterproductive? Are other shortcomings in the disclosure system still in need of correction?

These are among the questions that George Benston, Michael Bromwich, Robert E. Litan, and Alfred Wagenhofer address in Following the Money. While the authors agree that the U.S. system of corporate disclosure and governance is in need of change, they are concerned that policymakers may be overreacting in some areas and taking actions in others that may prove to be ineffective or even counterproductive.

Using the Enron case as a point of departure, the authors argue that the major problem lies not in the accounting and auditing standards themselves, but in the system of enforcing those standards. Rather than attempting to craft a single set of accounting and reporting standards for all companies throughout the world, the authors advise policymakers to allow competition between the two major sets of standards: Generally Accepted Accounting Principles and International Financial Reporting Standards.

The authors also believe that the corporate disclosure system needs to be updated to reflect changes in the underlying economy. In particular, they recommend new forms of disclosure for a variety of nonfinancial indicators to better enable investors and analysts to ascertain the source and nature of intangible assets. They also urge policymakers to exploit the advantages of the Internet by encouraging more frequent financial disclosures in a form that will make them more widely accessible and more easily used.



No Posting Of Mirror

Disclaimer:
Contents of this page are indexed from the Internet. All actions are under your responsability. Email us to report illegal contents or external links and we'll remove them immediately.

Please check the description for download links if any or do a search to find alternative books.

Can't Download?
Please search mirrors if you can't find download links for "Following the Money: The Enron Failure and the State of Corporate Disclosure" in "Description" and someone else may update the links. Check the comments when back to find any updates.

Search Mirrors
Maybe some mirror pages will be helpful, search this book at top of this page or click here to find more info.

1. Ebooks list page : 1639
2. Following the Money: The Enron Failure and the State of Corporate Disclosure
3. Following the Money: The Enron Failure and the State of Corporate Disclosure
4. Following the Money: The Enron Failure and the State of Corporate Disclosure by: Michael Bromwich
5. Resisting Corporate Corruption: Lessons in Practical Ethics from the Enron Wreckage
6. A Financial History of Modern U.s. Corporate Scandals: From Enron to Reform(Repost)
7. Corporate Aftershock: The Public Policy Lessons from the Collapse of Enron and Other Major Corporations
8. Corporate Aftershock: The Public Policy Lessons from the Collapse of Enron and Other Major Corporations (Repost)
9. Greed and Corporate Failure: The Lessons from Recent Disasters
10. Making States Work: State Failure And The Crisis Of Governance
11. Failure of Empire: Valens and the Roman State in the Fourth Century A.D.
12. A New History of Leviathan: Essays on the Rise of the American Corporate State
13. Public Services Or Corporate Welfare: Rethinking the Nation State in the Global Economy
14. Red State, Blue State, Rich State, Poor State: Why Americans Vote the Way They Do
15. Credit and State Theories of Money: The Contributions of A. Mitchell Innes
16. Harriman's Money Miscellany: A Collection of Financial Facts and Corporate Curiosities