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Essay on Groupon Case Assignment 2014

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ACTG 630 – Case Assignment Due: Wednesday, December 3 Please submit one assignment per group. No more than 3 students per group. Read “Growing Pains at Groupon” by Dutta, Caplan and Marcinko (2014) and complete the questions included in the Case Requirements section (beginning on page 238). Instructions for accessing the FASB Codification database: 1. Go to http://aaahq.org/ascLogin.cfm 2. User ID: AAA51526 3. Password: x43AYtX ISSUES IN ACCOUNTING EDUCATION Vol. 29, No. 1 2014 pp. 229–245 American Accounting Association DOI: 10.2308/iace-50595 Growing Pains at Groupon Saurav K. Dutta, Dennis H. Caplan, and David J. Marcinko GROWING PAINS AT GROUPON A s an undergraduate music major at Northwestern University, Andrew Mason eagerly …show more content…

The company’s revenue growth was also impressive. Beginning with $94,000 in 2008, revenue had grown to $713 million in 2010. In the first quarter of 2011, the company nearly equaled its entire 2010 sales, reporting revenue of $644 million, and total revenue for 2011 was $1.6 billion. Andrew Mason became a media star, appearing on CNBC and The Today Show. In August of 2010, he appeared on the cover of Forbes magazine, which touted Groupon as ‘‘the fastest growing company—ever.’’ The spectacular growth attracted more than media attention. Groupon quickly found itself pursued by corporate suitors. By mid-2010, Yahoo! offered to purchase the company for a price between $3 billion and $4 billion—it was an offer that Mason, who had no wish to work at Yahoo!, quickly turned down. Google then approached Groupon with an offer that would eventually grow to nearly $6 billion. Groupon rejected Google’s offer, as well. Faced with an ever-growing need for cash, this decision left Mason and Lefkofsky with only one option: to take Groupon public. They did so on November 4, 2011, at an IPO price of $20 per share, yielding a market capitalization of $13 billion. On the day of the IPO, the stock closed near its all-time high of $26 a share. It traded in the range of $18 to $24 for several months following the IPO. The stock price then declined precipitously after March 30, 2012, as shown in Figure 1, following the announcement of a material weakness in internal controls,

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