Diamond Foods Accounting Scandal

Wages and salaries were separated in the report to show the expense of five different kinds of

Each of them can be drilled down to the cost drivers in the categories above using the “bottoms-up” cost model (Exhibit 1).

LDDS started with about $650,000 in capital but soon accumulated $1.5 million in debt since it

The Wells Fargo scandal involved a variety of stakeholders who have stake in the issue; however, the main stakeholders include the consumers, the employees and their families, and stockholders of the organization. The affect these stakeholders suffer varies, but the ultimate affect the scandal has had is violation of trust by Wells Fargo and its leadership. When examining this situation, the main stakeholders who suffered the greatest harm from the scandal were the customers who fell victim to the fraud and had their privacy violated by an organization they trusted. In the course text, Trevino and Nelson spoke of the importance of trust and its importance in a service economy. Wells Fargo violation of the consumers’ trust has ultimately added

Organizational misconduct is the chief cause behind corporate accounting scandals. The trusted executives of the corporation participation in actions during a scandal are corrupt and illegal. In the United States, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is typically the government agency that investigates such scandals. One of the most notorious corporate accounting scandals in the United States is the HealthSouth Corporation scandal of 2003. HealthSouth Corporation is one of the United States largest health care providers with locations nationwide. A deeper inspection of the HealthSouth scandal is needed to understand how it transpired by assessing how it was executed, the accounting issues and root of the issue, how it was exposed, the results to the company and its officers, and warranted ramifications as an outcome of the scandal.

Such an intense focus has been placed on quarterly earnings as an indication of a company’s success by everyone from analysts to executives that ethics have for the most part been thrown out the window, sacrificed to the all important number, i.e. earnings per share. This is the theory in Alex Berenson’s book “The Number: How the Drive for Quarterly Earnings Corrupted Wall Street and Corporate America.” This number has become part of a game to be played, a figure to be manipulated – beat the number and Wall Street all but throws a parade, miss it and a company’s stock may be abandoned. Take into account the incentives that executives have to beat the number and one can find plenty of reasons to manage earnings.

Frito Lay, a division of PepsiCo Inc, has just purchased the Cracker Jack brand from Borden Inc. The company is a worldwide leader in the manufacturing and marketing of snacks, with products such as Ruffles Potato Chips, Fritos Corn Chips and Doritos found among its product mix. These well known company brands have seen it capture over 50 percent of the retail sales, and company officials envisage Cracker Jack can only but add to the richness of its product line and profits. Borden, because of its strategic decision to concentrate resources elsewhere, discontinued aggressive

It is important for stockholders to continuously re-evaluate their investments. Although some investors do this more frequently and thoroughly than others, the majority of shareholders do so at least once each year. Therefore, Torres’ desire to update her analysis in order to determine whether Costco was still operating efficiently makes perfect sense. After thorough examination, my analysis proves that Costco remains one of the industry’s leading competitors and there seems to be no reason for Torres to sell her shares as long as she wishes to retain holdings of a

Like several companies, Nortel stipendiary their executives with stock choices (Collins, 2011). This compensation solely inspired the tendency to be but honest regarding the company’s finances. author closely-held stock choices that solely inspired his actions to fulfill or beat the benchmark set by analysts. If Nortel’s earnings showed to be higher than the benchmark, Nortel’s stock costs would rise creating the stock closely-held by management to be even a lot of valuable. By tweaking the books to indicate the road earnings price as critical the allowable accumulation price he created the stakeholders assume that the corporate was creating extra money than it had been. “Nortel ne'er incomprehensible a benchmark over the sixteen quarters (Collins, 2011).” it had been too tempting to bump the numbers up so the stocks gave the impression to be value over they were. “Nortel’s accounting practices junction rectifier to AN investigation by AN freelance review committee, that found that insubordination with accumulation and accounting fraud were undertaken to fulfill internally obligatory earnings targets (Collins, 2011).”

“Blake Romney became Chief Executive Officer of Peters Inc. two years ago. At the time, the company was reporting lagging profits, and Blake was brought in to "stir things up." The company has three divisions, electronics, fiber optics, and plumbing supplies. Blake has no interest in plumbing supplies, and one of the first things he did was to put pressure on his accountants to reallocate some of the company’s fixed costs away from the other two divisions to the plumbing division. This had the effect of causing the plumbing division to report losses during the last two years; in the past it had always reported low, but acceptable,

Increase in the profits above the actual budget can be attributed to 20% increase in sales in 2009. Although Jean’s profits were above the actual budget, French Division’s earnings were much lower than what it could have been, had they budgeted for the actual volume of sales that they ended up selling. We can partly attribute this decrease in earnings to the fact

After having to restate both its 2010 and 2011 financials in 2012, it was discovered that the company was operating at a net loss of $86,336,000 and earnings (loss) per share of $3.98. During 2012 the company’s stock price dropped significantly by about 54 percent from $21.50 in early November to $12.50 in late November (U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, 2012, In re Diamond Foods Inc., Securities Litigation: Complaint). On November 14th, 2012 Diamond restated its financial statements which reduced its 2012 first, second, and third quarter earnings. This also reduced the company’s 2011 and 2010 earnings by 57% to $29 million and 46% to $23 million respectively (Mintz, 2013). Mendes and Neil with the assistance from Deloitte had such a tight control, making the ability to detect the fraud difficult. This caused the fraud to be concealed, which led to serious financial implications, and the need to restructure the company’s top management.

In March 1995, Fred Aldrich, a summer trainee with the First Investments, Inc., was called into the office of the head of investment analysis section of the trust department. The following conversation took place: Fred, here are the 1994, 1993, and 1985 Basic Industries Company’s financials (Exhibit 1) and a 10-year summary (Exhibit 2 ). Our trust department has owned this stock since the early 1980s. As you know, our portfolio people place a lot of emphasis on the quality of a company’s earnings and the return on owners’ equity in making stock selections. Well, they are worried. The 1994 Basic Industries annual report

HealthSouth Corporation is based in Birmingham, Alabama, it is the largest provider of rehabilitative health care services. It operates in 26 states in the United States of America and in Puerto Rico. HealthSouth provides rehabilitation hospitals, long term heightened care hospitals, outpatient rehabilitation satellite clinics and home health agencies.

Once a company makes a profit, they must decide on what to do with those profits. They could continue to retain the profits within the company, or they could pay out the profits to the owners of the firm in the form of dividends. Once the company decides on whether to pay dividends, they may establish a somewhat permanent dividend policy, which may in turn impact on investors and perceptions of the company in the financial markets. What they decide depends on the situation of the