Unfortunately, we have witnessed throughout history businesses skewing accounting records to benefit themselves. There are many small, somewhat unnoticeable changes that a company can make towards their books that potentially will benefit them in any way they wish. Sometimes, these changes are just mistakes like the German based company, Hypo Real Estate in 2011 (Buergin). Other instances have included infamous companies like Enron, Worldcom, and Tyco, in which they all knowingly changed miscellaneous accounts on the books for their own company’s benefit. Tesco, in 2014, has gotten themselves in trouble once it was found that they had manipulated the accounting information to improve their image towards potential investors. They overstated …show more content…
Currently, there is no law requiring that a company must rotate the firm that audits their statements. However, some believe that without rotation, many problems occur. In fact, earlier this year, the European Parliament passed a new set of rules to require audit rotation every 10 to 24 years (Chasan). Michel Barnier, the European Internal Market and Services Commissioner stated “These new measures will reduce risk of excessive familiarity between statutory auditors and their clients, encourage fresh thinking, and limit conflict of interest” …show more content…
When a company, like Tesco, has the same independent firm doing their auditing, they become part of their “team”. The firms will be looking at these companies as clients and start to develop a dangerous relationship with them. They are aware that if these businesses fall, they will lose a client which lowers their profits. This affair has led to several frauds with the most infamous one being Enron. Enron had employed Arthur Anderson LLP as their independent auditor, and throughout their time serving for them, there were multiple reports that the employees of Arthur Anderson continuously stayed at Enron and acted as if they were actually Enron employees instead of Arthur Anderson. The president of the American Association of Individual Investors, John Markese, was quoted, “All that closeness goes a long way towards breaking down barriers of independence” (Herrick and Barrionuevo). Eventually, this closeness led to Arthur Anderson helping Enron keep off major debt from the balance sheet which led to many shareholders and employees getting
The SEC and the former Chairman Arthur Levitt Jr. were extremely concerned that the public accounting firms were violating the auditors independence rules addressed through the Securities Exchange Acts. Auditing firms now had dual citizenship in public companies: (1) they issued opinions on audited financial statements and (2) they participated in various consulting engagements for those same companies. Levitt's solution was to split auditing and consulting. The former Chairman was concerned that the public would lose confidence in the financial markets …… and the whole system would be jeopardized.
A documentary film released in 2005 called the Smartest Guys in the Room reveals the shocking collapse of Enron. The Smartest Guys, Kenneth Lay, Jeff Skilling, Andrew Fastow, Lou Pai, Clifford Baxtor, and Arthur Anderson, were all involved with America’s ultimate Corporation Scandal. But who do we blame? Enron had over 20,000 employees and was founded by Kenneth Lay, CEO of Enron, in 1985. Lay wanted to push his views of deregulation which pushed him to start the company (SGR). The first event that happened leading up to the downfall was the president, Mr. Borget, and his traders manipulating the company’s earnings and exporting the profits to their personal account. When Lay made the decision to not fire them, it definitely raised the
Throughout the past several years major corporate scandals have rocked the economy and hurt investor confidence. The largest bankruptcies in history have resulted from greedy executives that “cook the books” to gain the numbers they want. These scandals typically involve complex methods for misusing or misdirecting funds, overstating revenues, understating expenses, overstating the value of assets or underreporting of liabilities, sometimes with the cooperation of officials in other corporations (Medura 1-3). In response to the increasing number of scandals the US government amended the Sarbanes Oxley act of 2002 to mitigate these problems. Sarbanes Oxley has extensive regulations that hold the CEO and top executives responsible for the numbers they report but problems still occur. To ensure proper accounting standards have been used Sarbanes Oxley also requires that public companies be audited by accounting firms (Livingstone). The problem is that the accounting firms are also public companies that also have to look after their bottom line while still remaining objective with the corporations they audit. When an accounting firm is hired the company that hired them has the power in the relationship. When the company has the power they can bully the firm into doing what they tell them to do. The accounting firm then loses its objectivity and independence making their job ineffective and not accomplishing their goal of honest accounting (Gerard). Their have been 379 convictions of fraud to date, and 3 to 6 new cases opening per month. The problem has clearly not been solved (Ulinski).
The Enron Corporation was committed to pushing the legal limit as far as possible. Many individuals only seeking to promote their own well-being over any legal or ethical boundaries did this. This was not only isolated with the Enron Corporation, as Arthur Andersen the outside accounting firm and Vinson & Elkins Enron’s law firm were also participants. The key players that led to the collapse of Enron was the founder Kenneth Lay, his successor
But in order the books should look a little acceptable and no one should come up on their fraud instantly and specially the lower level bookkeeping team by doing their day to day entries and knowing that utility expenses is not a capital improvement they had to do it in a professional way
... tempted to falsely inflate earnings is to take away their personal gains, if the company's stocks go up. I believe that when upper level management has too much incentive based on personal financial gain, which is directly based on the performance of the company; it compromises their judgments. I think that upper level management should not be allowed to receive stock options or to even own stock in the company as the financial statements would provide a neutral, bias-free report. Management would have no reason to "cook the books." I also feel that any management who still decides to falsify documents needs to be held more accountable for their actions and receive tougher punishments. I think that these strict guidelines would help the people in the United States and people all over the world feel more confident in investing their money into the stock market.
"Audit Independence - Independence of Australian Company Auditors." Insert Name of Site in Italics. N.p., n.d. Web. 23 Apr. 2014 .
Every company or organization that operates for profit is constantly seeking new opportunities to increase its value and profitability. If the company has stocks in an open market, the pressure increases to have a profitable business that offers investors opportunities to increase their investment through dividends. To achieve this, many companies engage in unethical accounting methods to manipulate the finances of the company. One of the biggest cases in history where the hunger to have a profitable business drove the executives of a well-known chain of orthopedic hospitals to engage in numerous unethical and illegal accounting behaviors is the case of HealthSouth.
Accounting fraud refers to fraud that is committed by a company by maintaining false information about the sales and income in the company books, when overstating the company's assets or profits, when a company is actually undergoing a loss. These fraudulent records are then used to seek investment in the company's bond or security issues. By showing these false entries, the company attempts to apply fraudulent loan applications as a final attempt to save the company by obtaining more money from bankruptcy. Accounting frauds is actually done to hide the company’s actual financial issues.
This shows that although audit as a profession has existed for a long period of time, it is not yet perfect at preventing such events from occurring, which shows that it needs to be continually improving in order to succeed. Agency theory is also integral to the audit profession as in many cases, auditing is conducted to ensure the agent (organisation) is acting in the principals (stakeholders) best interests instead of prioritising their self-interest which in most cases would be profits at the expense of shareholders (Eisenhardt, 1989). Audit Quality Model Figure 1, Audit Quality Model (IFAC, 2013) With reference to Fig.
“When a company called Enron… ascends to the number seven spot on the Fortune 500 and then collapses in weeks into a smoking ruin, its stock worth pennies, its CEO, a confidante of presidents, more or less evaporated, there must be lessons in there somewhere.” - Daniel Henninger.
The Enron Corporation was an American energy company that provided natural gas, electricity, and communications to its customers both wholesale and retail globally and in the northwestern United States (Ferrell, et al, 2013). Top executives, prestigious law firms, trusted accounting firms, the largest banks in the finance industry, the board of directors, and other high powered people, all played a part in the biggest most popular scandal that shook the faith of the American people in big business and the stock market with the demise of one of the top Fortune 500 companies that made billions of dollars through illegal and unethical gains (Ferrell, et al, 2013). Many shareholders, employees, and investors lost their entire life savings, investments,
The evolution of auditing is a complicated history that has always been changing through historical events. Auditing always changed to meet the needs of the business environment of that day. Auditing has been around since the beginning of human civilization, focusing mainly, at first, on finding efraud. As the United States grew, the business world grew, and auditing began to play more important roles. In the late 1800’s and early 1900’s, people began to invest money into large corporations. The Stock Market crash of 1929 and various scandals made auditors realize that their roles in society were very important. Scandals and stock market crashes made auditors aware of deficiencies in auditing, and the auditing community was always quick to fix those deficiencies. The auditors’ job became more difficult as the accounting principles changed, and became easier with the use of internal controls. These controls introduced the need for testing; not an in-depth detailed audit. Auditing jobs would have to change to meet the changing business world. The invention of computers impacted the auditors’ world by making their job at times easier and at times making their job more difficult. Finally, the auditors’ job of certifying and testing companies’ financial statements is the backbone of the business world.
The Tyco accounting scandal is an ideal illustration of how individuals who hold key positions in an organization are able to manipulate accounting practices and financial reports for personal gain. The few key individuals involved in the Tyco Scandal (CEO Kozlowski and CFO Swartz), used a number of clever and unique tactics in order to accomplish what they did; including spring loading, manipulating their ‘key-employee loan’ program, and multiple ‘hush money’ payouts.
The complete destruction of companies including Arthur Andersen, HealthSouth, and Enron, revealed a significant weakness in the United States audit system. The significant weakness is the failure to deliver true independence between the auditors and their clients. In each of these companies there was deviation from professional rules of conduct resulting from the pressures of clients placed upon their auditors (Goldman, and Barlev 857-859). Over the years, client and auditor relationships were intertwined tightly putting aside the unbiased function of auditors. Auditor careers depended on the success of their client (Kaplan 363-383). Auditors found themselves in situations that put their profession in a questionable time driving them to compromise their ethics, professionalism, objectivity, and their independence from the company. A vital trust relationship role for independent auditors has been woven in society and this role is essential for the effective functioning of the financial economic system (Guiral, Rogers, Ruiz, and Gonzalo 155-166). However, the financial world has lost confidence in the trustworthiness of auditor firms. There are three potential threats to auditor independence: executives hiring and firing auditors, auditors taking positions the client instead of the unbiased place, and auditors providing non audit services to clients (Moore, Tetlock, Tanlu, and Bazerman 10-29).