Corporate Earnings: Facts and Fiction

摘要

Investors' confidence in the quality and integrity of corporate financial reports has been seriously shaken of late. The ever-increasing procession of headlines about fraudulent earnings, inflated asset values and understated liabilities reported by erstwhile leading companies―the likes of Enron, Tyco, WorldCom, Xerox and a host of lesser household names, all audited by major accounting firms―suggests systematic deficiencies in the accounting standards and governance systems that generate financial information of public companies, not to mention in the regulatory systems overseeing them.