WorldCom Finds $3.8 Billion Error, Fires CFO

[Saras]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger


Do you know if it's Cisco equipment?

Most likely yes; why?

[Roland]

GP:

"housing: I prefer to disaggregate issues. You always seem to want to glom everything together."

That's like describing ****ing by disaggregating the hand and the ****.

moomin:

"Mainly this has to do with that "full and fair" policy that the Brits managed to slip into EU law when they joined."

True and fair.

Funnily enough the germans got their definition from the HGB into the directive 83/349/EEC too.

"16 (3) Der konsolidierte Abschluß hat ein den tatsächlichen Verhältnissen entsprechendes Bild der Vermögens-, Finanz-und Ertragslage der Gesamtheit der in die Konsolidierung einbezogenen Unternehmen zu vermitteln."

"16 3. Consolidated accounts shall give a true and fair view of the assets, liabilities, financial position and profit or loss of the undertakings included therein taken as a whole."

So the german text actually says a "real" or "realistic" or "true" view. Nothing about fair.

Read an article a while back about the differences. They are mostly subtle, but it's a funny example for the problems of multilingual legislation.

[Urban Ranger]

The irony is that Cisco's major telecom cusomers including Sprint, MCI/Worldcom, AT&T and others don't seem to have figured out that, like Microsoft had done, Cisco is not only providing them equipment but also going after their core future customer revenue base. Many other similar examples exist in other telecom related markets including content delivery and storage services in which Cisco is implementing the same strategy.

What does not make sense is financing equipment that does not work and thereby impairing your customer's business. Later AMC, another telecom company that is now suing Cisco after having gone bankrupt over similar service and equipment problems, will be examined.

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[lightblue]

I am just glad I turned down that Arthur Andersen job two years ago...

[Sava]

Speaking of Arthur Andersen, I wonder if Worldcom and Enron are the only two to inflate profits like this. The list of Andersen clients was huge. How many more companies are going to suffer this same fate? Even if at least a quarter of the companies engaged in this practice, the sh!t's going to hit the fan.

[Roland]

The clever companies did their funny accounting legally. Or shall we say, legally enough to be ignored.

What I wonder about is the impact on macroeconomic aggregates. To some extent corporate revenue and earnings numbers feed into those numbers.

[TCO]

Originally posted by Saras
GP

--"My copy of Valuation does not comment on the issue of which accounting system is more subject to fraudulent manipulation."

There are other books, you know

I already had a caveat about the limited state of my library (and knowledge) wrt details of accounting.

What book do you suggest here? Also, what was that book you recommended for an analysis of financial statements?