Challenges For Accounting And Finance Professionals

During 2011, suspicions surfaced that Olympus had been engaging in improper accounting practices for over 20 years. It had allegedly circumvented relevant laws and continued to conceal its losses by transferring the financial instruments relating to its unrealised losses to several funds that were not part of the Olympus group. The scandal attracted global public attention, especially after the CEO and president of Olympus at that time, Michael Woodford, was expelled by the board of directors.

Richard Scrushy defrauded, stakeholders, stockholders, and the community out of millions of dollars. His deceptive, unethical, and commanding behavior was the stone that caused the biggest misappropriation avalanche of all time. We must consider this question, how is corporate cheating happening and who is heading the deception? Behind every crime, there is a ringleader or a group of individuals "calling the shots." In this case, Scrushy was the one who told his "family meeting members" to "fix" financial records, so HealthSouth to meet or exceed the business financial goals. A person from the beginning may have the objective to cheat; others get sucked into the whirlpool of white-collar crime.

Traditionally, the positive image of a company or a brand is very important in the contemporary world. As a result, the question of morality of each individual working within an organization is of a paramount importance. In such a situation there should be no exceptions from the rule and executives could not be in a privileged position. This is the desirable ideal many companies strive to achieve at least in a public eye. However, the reality turns to be quite different from what is expected and the analyzed case of an executive’s double standard is just another evidence of the fact that the real life is so complicated that the common rules, including moral

The word “fraud” was magnified in the business world around the end of 2001 and the beginning of 2002. No one had seen anything like it. Enron, one of the country’s largest energy companies, went bankrupt and took down with it Arthur Andersen, one of the five largest audit and accounting firms in the world. Enron was followed by other accounting scandals such as WorldCom, Tyco, Freddie Mac, and HealthSouth, yet Enron will always be remembered as one of the worst corporate accounting scandals of all time. Enron’s collapse was brought upon by the greed of its corporate hierarchy and how it preyed upon its faithful stockholders and employees who invested so much of their time and money into the company. Enron seemed to portray that the goal of corporate America was to drive up stock prices and get to the peak of the financial mountain by any means necessary. The “Conspiracy of Fools” is a tale of power, crony capitalism, and company greed that lead Enron down the dark road of corporate America.

Between the years 2000 and 2002 there were over a dozen corporate scandals involving unethical corporate governance practices. The allegations ranged from faulty revenue reporting and falsifying financial records, to the shredding and destruction of financial documents (Patsuris, 2002). Most notably, are the cases involving Enron and Arthur Andersen. The allegations of the Enron scandal went public in October 2001. They included, hiding debt and boosting profits to the tune of more than one billion dollars. They were also accused of bribing foreign governments to win contacts and manipulating both the California and Texas power markets (Patsuris, 2002). Following these allegations, Arthur Andersen was investigated for, allegedly,

Describe at least two (2) career options someone with an accounting education can pursue. Be sure to reference sources such as the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants.

Performing a SWOT analysis includes describing and studying a business’s internal competences – its strengths and weaknesses – comparative to the opportunities and threats of its economic location. Capstone Accountants will take strategic actions to realm or withstand strengths, balance weaknesses, prevent or mitigate threats, and take advantage of opportunities. Strategy can be seen as the evaluation act performed by Capstone Accountants as it connects the high wire looped between the external environment (opportunities and threats) and the internal capabilities of the firm (strengths and weaknesses). Strengths Capstone Accountants has knowledgeable staff with extensive experience in the accounting field; therefore, our employees are our strength.

This study aims to understand what effect has an ethical framework in accounting. In particular, we examine the influence of ethics on earnings management, financial reporting, and external accounting. Today, the commercial environment reveals the unethical behavior of management and accountants through the manipulation of accounting records to boost the company’s stock price, falsified financial statements to mislead investors, failure of auditors to correct errors and omissions due to client’s pressure and personal material interests.

The executives are accountable to the board of directors. Instead of protecting the investors, the board enticed the culture of financial fraud in the company for selfish gains. It failed in its duties in keeping the executives in check.

1- Encouraging employees to invest and buy stock in Enron when they knew the truth about the lack of value in the stock.

Question 1: The situation in this case study revolves around Sally, a member of the Board of Sally Susie's Donut Shop, Inc. (SSDS). SSDS uses an accrual method of accounting and over the past three years has seen volatile sales. Sally is unhappy with her previous tax advisor and wants new advice. Our task is to outline a preliminary interview with Sally to ensure that we ask the right questions.

This paper describes the case of Olympus, a Japanese manufacturer of optic equipment, at which in early 2012 a scandal was uncovered which was soon dubbed to be one of the largest loss-concealment schemes of Japan. In the 1990’s, Olympus incurred significant losses on financial investments made. These were subsequently hidden with the aid of investment companies by shifting the investments around. In the 2000’s, these losses were to be repaid by paying exorbitant merger and acquisition fees to these investment companies. After newly-appointed CEO Michael Woodford blew the whistle on these frauds, the company got into trouble. Our research into the events leading to this

This research paper will explore the fraud at Tyco and focus primarily on accounting and auditing issues related to the fraud. One thing worth noting about this case is that fraudulent financial reporting was not at the core of the fraud, which was the case with majority other big frauds at the time, such as Enron and Waste Management. On the contrary, fraud consisted of misappropriation of assets, and fraudulent financial reporting came as a consequence of trying to hide misappropriation of assets and the use of corporate money for personal benefit.

However, having said that the company implemented such a positively imaged campaign, Olympus Scandal occurred in 2011 was a corporate scandal of the managements and directors’ financial misconducts. The scandal was disclosed by the newly appointed CEO at that time, Michael Woodford, who was fired after two week’s appointment because he discovered abnormal financial activities and appointed a special investigation to detect issue. The ex-CEO, previous directors and some of current management were arrested for the

The key to the article “Cooking the Books” is to cover the business ethics of an accounting manager ordering one of his accountants to falsifying a company’s accounting ledger. The Generally Accepted Accounting Principle of expense recognition was not followed. The accounting manager was attempting to commit fraud for personal gain, he does this by manipulating the books to show higher revenue in order to meet the volume for management bonus. The accounting manager also created a hostile working environment by threating his accountant’s job security if he didn’t comply with his orders. The Sarbanes-Oxley Act will also be explored to see if there was a violation due to the unethical behavior of the