Posts Categorized: Auditing

The Avandia Disaster

Posted by & filed under Accounting Principles, Advanced Accounting, All Articles, Auditing, Cost Accounting, Financial Accounting, Financial Reporting and Analysis, Financial Statement Analysis, Fraud Accounting, IFRS, Intermediate Accounting, International Accounting, Managerial Accounting, Uncategorized.

GlaxoSmithKline (GSK)’s $3.4 billion legal charge on the diabetes drug Avandia probably isn’t the last of the costs the company will record against this drug. That means Avandia will probably be a lossmaker for GSK, proving that former CEO Jean-Pierre Garnier 1999 failure to follow up on worries about heart attack deaths associated with Avandia… Read more »

Is it the End for Borders’ Books?

Posted by & filed under Accounting Principles, Advanced Accounting, All Articles, Auditing, Cost Accounting, Financial Accounting, Financial Reporting and Analysis, Financial Statement Analysis, Fraud Accounting, IFRS, Intermediate Accounting, International Accounting, Managerial Accounting, Uncategorized, Video Updates.

Borders (BGP), the second largest bookstore chain in the country, may soon be nothing more than a memory. But the big question is: who’s going to pick up the business?  Borders had five rounds of layoffs in 2010 and began 2011 with the departure of five top executives, including the CIO and general counsel. It… Read more »

Lawsuit Loans

Posted by & filed under Accounting Principles, Advanced Accounting, All Articles, Auditing, Cost Accounting, Financial Accounting, Financial Reporting and Analysis, Financial Statement Analysis, Fraud Accounting, IFRS, Intermediate Accounting, International Accounting, Managerial Accounting, Uncategorized.

The business of lending to plaintiffs in court cases arose over the last decade as part of a trend in which banks, hedge funds and private investors are putting money into other people’s lawsuits. But the industry, which now lends plaintiffs more than $100 million a year, remains unregulated in most states, free to ignore… Read more »

The Accountant Did It

Posted by & filed under Accounting Principles, Advanced Accounting, All Articles, Auditing, Cost Accounting, Financial Accounting, Financial Reporting and Analysis, Financial Statement Analysis, Fraud Accounting, IFRS, Intermediate Accounting, International Accounting, Managerial Accounting, Uncategorized.

A 43-year-old CPA who volunteered to do the books for the Libertyville Boys Club turned himself in after $66,700 of the not-for profit group’s youth football program funds were missing. Jacobsen had been volunteering his services to the club since February 2009 as the treasurer of the club based at Butler Lake Park, Illinois. Libertyville… Read more »

Tax Refunds on Debit Cards

Posted by & filed under Accounting Principles, Advanced Accounting, All Articles, Auditing, Cost Accounting, Financial Accounting, Financial Reporting and Analysis, Financial Statement Analysis, Fraud Accounting, IFRS, Intermediate Accounting, International Accounting, Managerial Accounting, Uncategorized, Video Updates.

A new pilot program for low-income Americans could allow individuals to get their tax refunds on prepaid debit cards. The government said it will offer 600,000 low- and medium-income taxpayers the chance to put their tax refunds on prepaid debit cards. Half the 600,000 offers from Treasury will carry a $4.95 monthly fee, while the rest… Read more »

2011 Prediction

Posted by & filed under Accounting Principles, Advanced Accounting, All Articles, Auditing, Cost Accounting, Financial Accounting, Financial Reporting and Analysis, Financial Statement Analysis, Fraud Accounting, IFRS, Intermediate Accounting, International Accounting, Managerial Accounting, Uncategorized.

According to William K Black, the FBI and the DOJ will not be likely to prosecute the elite bank officers that ran the enormous “accounting control fraudss that drove the financial crisis. While over 1,000 elites were convicted of felonies arising from the savings and loan crisis from the 1980’s and 1990’s , there are no convictions of… Read more »

Cooking the Books for Lehman?

Posted by & filed under Accounting Principles, Advanced Accounting, All Articles, Auditing, Cost Accounting, Financial Accounting, Financial Reporting and Analysis, Financial Statement Analysis, Fraud Accounting, IFRS, Intermediate Accounting, International Accounting, Managerial Accounting, Uncategorized, Video Updates.

N.Y. Attorney General Cuomo filed charges against Ernst & Young on December 21, 2010, alleging that the firm helped Wall Street Investment bank Lehman Brothers conceal its deteriorating financial condition before the bank’s historic collapse in the fall of 2008.  The civil lawsuit, which seeks more than $150 million, is the first law enforcement action to… Read more »

Who Holds the Note? A Loaded Question for Credit Scores.

Posted by & filed under Accounting Principles, Advanced Accounting, All Articles, Auditing, Cost Accounting, Financial Accounting, Financial Reporting and Analysis, Financial Statement Analysis, Fraud Accounting, IFRS, Intermediate Accounting, International Accounting, Managerial Accounting, Uncategorized.

Before Steven Marks started looking for debt relief on his Reno, Nev. home, he sent a simple request to Bank of America to ask who owned his mortgage.  He also wanted documentation of this.  What he got in return was an initial decline regarding who owned his loan by Bank of America and a lowering of his credit score. … Read more »

Extreme Dress Code

Posted by & filed under Accounting Principles, Advanced Accounting, All Articles, Auditing, Cost Accounting, Financial Accounting, Financial Reporting and Analysis, Financial Statement Analysis, Fraud Accounting, IFRS, Intermediate Accounting, International Accounting, Managerial Accounting, Uncategorized, Video Updates.

You’ve hear of Extreme Sports, but what about Extreme Dress Code?  UBS sought to downplay a new 43-page dress code widely lampooned in the international press for detailed instructions to staff extending as far as the color of their underwear and the care of nasal hair and nails. The memo said the dress code was… Read more »

Return Fraud

Posted by & filed under Accounting Principles, Advanced Accounting, All Articles, Auditing, Cost Accounting, Financial Accounting, Financial Reporting and Analysis, Financial Statement Analysis, Fraud Accounting, IFRS, Intermediate Accounting, International Accounting, Managerial Accounting, Uncategorized, Video Updates.

Return fraud costs the retail industry billions of dollars in lost revenues every year. The growing crime is expected to cost retail stores across the nation an estimated $3.7 billion this holiday shopping season alone, according to the National Retail Federation. If that estimate holds true, it will represent 35 percent increase over last year’s… Read more »