Consider the dilemma you might someday face if you are the CFO of a company that is struggling to satisfy investors, creditors, stockholders, and internal company managers. All of these financial statement users are clamoring for higher profits and more net assets (also known as equity). If at some point, you suddenly found yourself not meeting the internal and external earnings and equity targets that these parties expect, you would probably search for some way to make the financial statements look better. What if your boss, the CEO, suggested that maybe you should make just one simple journal entry to record all the goods that your company is holding on consignment, as if that significant amount of goods were owned by your company? She might say that this action on your part would fix a lot of problems at once, since adding the consigned goods to merchandise inventory would simultaneously increase net assets on the balance sheet and increase net income on the income statement (since it would decrease cost of goods sold). How would you respond to this request? Write a memo, detailing your willingness or not to embrace this suggestion, giving reasons behind your decision. Remember to exercise diplomacy, even if you must dissent from the opinion of a supervisor. Note that the challenge of the assignment is to keep your integrity intact while also keeping your job, if possible.
Consider the dilemma you might someday face if you are the CFO of a company that is struggling to satisfy investors, creditors, stockholders, and internal company managers. All of these financial statement users are clamoring for higher profits and more net assets (also known as equity). If at some point, you suddenly found yourself not meeting the internal and external earnings and equity targets that these parties expect, you would probably search for some way to make the financial statements look better. What if your boss, the CEO, suggested that maybe you should make just one simple journal entry to record all the goods that your company is holding on consignment, as if that significant amount of goods were owned by your company? She might say that this action on your part would fix a lot of problems at once, since adding the consigned goods to merchandise inventory would simultaneously increase net assets on the balance sheetand increase net income on the income statement (since it would decrease cost of goods sold). How would you respond to this request?
Write a memo, detailing your willingness or not to embrace this suggestion, giving reasons behind your decision. Remember to exercise diplomacy, even if you must dissent from the opinion of a supervisor. Note that the challenge of the assignment is to keep your integrity intact while also keeping your job, if possible.
Definition Definition Financial statement that provides a snapshot of an organization's financial position at a specific point in time. It summarizes a company's assets, liabilities, and shareholder's equity, detailing what the company owns, what it owes, and what is left over for its owners. The balance sheet serves as a crucial tool to assess the financial health and stability of a company, as well as to help management make informed decisions about its future investments and financial obligations.
A crucial role of financial managers is in making financial decisions and exercising control over finances in the organization. They make use of techniques like ratio analysis, financial forecasting, profit, and loss analysis, among others.
Imaging you are the CFO of a multinational corporation and part of your daily tasks are the making of financial decisions, and one specific of those decisions will boost this quarter earnings but will impact stock market value. What should you do? Implement your decision or modify it to halter the potential impact of stock value?
The following comment appeared in the financial press: “Inadequate financial disclosure, particularly with respect to how management views the future and its role in the marketplace, has always been a stone in the shoe. After all, if you don't know how a company views the future, how can you judge the worth of its corporate strategy?” What are some arguments for reporting earnings forecasts?
According to the textbook: Return on Equity (ROE) is a measure of how the stockholders fared during the year. Because benefiting shareholders is our goal, ROE is, in an accounting sense, the true bottom-line measure of performance. Breaking ROE into its constituent parts, by using the DuPont identity, identifies a firm’s operating efficiency, asset use, and financial leverage. However, these measures rely upon accounting data that may or may not be useful. Why would a firm have a negative ROE? Should investors buy stocks that have negative ROEs? What do you see as an alternative measure of how a firm benefits its shareholders?
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