Throughout the case, it can be seen how Cendant Corporation was performing activities that dealt with the interactions of income smoothing. The main cause of performing with Income Smoothing was to make their shareholders and investors believe that they had a professional and ethical operation running. Income smoothing can best be represented as how either gains or losses from a certain period are taken into a good or bad period with losses or no profits. Income smoothing throughout this case was used as an unethical practice performed by Cendant Corporation to achieve financial stability and falsify numbers to make the investors believe they had premium stocks when in reality it wasn’t what was really occurring which would then lead to the …show more content…
The fraud triangle is made up by three distinguished elements. These elements in the fraud triangle consist of pressure, opportunity, and rationalization. The overall representation of the fraud triangle can be seen as the specific model to spot any type of high-risk unethical and fraudulent performances being conducted by a company, in this case Cendant Corporation. Cedant Corporations actions can be analyzed by the fraud triangle by the way that their senior management/top management decisions fell into the three categories of pressure, rationalization, and opportunity. Cendant Corporation had the pressure to comply with their shareholders and to maintain a stable financial status to prove that they were a profitable organization with a bright company image. Another pressure presented in this case for Cendant Corporation was that for the top management once again. The top management needed to have their financial information seem profitable, therefore pressured the accountant of the company to falsify and “cook the books” to make the financial statements seem actually “profitable” when it wasn’t what It really was. As said in the previous question, income smoothing was used in this case by Cendant Corporation as an unethical practice to make the investors believe that their shares were all bright …show more content…
It is a basic element that is involved between the two respective individuals in a business relationship. In this case, throughout the unethical performances conducted inside by Cendant Corporation’s top management, trust was broken. Aside from the trust being broken down, corporate governance had its shortcomings as well. EY had faith on the word placed by Cendant Corporation and wasn’t on their mind that they were going to be fooled in such way. Cendant made EY believe that their financial paperwork was complying with GAAP and not in an unethical manner as it was truly seen at the end of the case. This proves that throughout the case, Cendant Corporation wasn’t acting fully ethical nor with the desired fiduciary actions to their investors and the auditing team in this case being Ernst&Young. Aside from the trust being broken apart between both, there was never a sign of an internal control inside Cedant. Therefore, there shows that the corporate governance for Cendant Corporation didn’t have signs of existence as well. Most frauds that were occurring before the implementation of the SOX-2002, had top management such as in Cendant that didn’t have care for the ethical performances as much as in today’s corporate world with more regulations in hand by the government. At the end, Cendant had filings against them concerning their corporate governance
There were a number of serious disclosure issues in this case that had to be resolved which in turn led to other, fairly large, party discoveries. CIBC’s defense to the wrongful dismissal of Mr. Saturley is just cause. Mr. Saturley was accused of causing trades for many clients without their consent, and that he had performed a task which was outside of his duties to perform. Throughout the trial Mr. Saturley had been pushing for details of the accusations towards him.
Relevant Facts: Nurofen, the pain-relief medication is made by Reckitt Benckiser Australia, a multinational company. The company was found misleading customers for all its specific range that contained the same active ingredient ibuprofen lysine 342mg and was seen to have same effect. The product was advertised the products as been targeting back pain, period pain and tension headaches. The Company was fined $1.7m for misleading customers on range of ‘specific pain’ relief contravening Australian Consumer Law has been brought forward by ACCC. The ACCC had asked federal court to impose $6 million fine.
Before the Sarbane-Oxley Act of 2002 came into effect in the American economy, most investors and shareholders were left in the dark – most often at the mercy of big corporations whose accounting practices were largely unregulated. The act was a response to the infamous scandal of Enron, WorldCom, Tyco, and Adelphia – all of whom had unethical business practices that caused their shareholders to lose the astronomical amount of investment when their scandals made headlines. The Sarbane-Oxley Act (SOX) requires a business to implement a code of ethics for its employees, especially senior financial officers; it also requires a business rotate its financial auditors on a regular basis. (Orin, 2008) The implementation of a code of ethics aims to
on May 20, 2002, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) announcedproceedings against Ernst & Young (EY). The case reaches back to the years before EY 's consulting practice was sold to Cap Gemini. It involves alleged independence violations due to product sales and consulting fees related to PeopleSoft software, while PeopleSoft was an EY audit client. The SEC alleges that EY and PeopleSoft co-developed and co-marketed a software product called "EY/GEMS for PeopleSoft. " These allegations focus on EY 's use of components of PeopleSoft 's proprietary source code in software previously developed and marketed by the accounting firm 's tax department.
A great example of fraud was when Peter and the two employees hacked the corporate system in order to transfer money to their personal accounts. Moreover, theft is executed when they stole the copier machine with the only intention to destruct it. These types of frauds have been considered misappropriation of assets since both, the money and the copier machine, were counted as a part of the company assets and they as employees of the IT company abuse of their job positions to benefit their personal needs through the omission of fraudulent
As outlined in chapter 10 of the course text, inequality in housing and wealth is a major problem. The United States is described to be the most unequal countries in the western hemisphere. But with the inequalities when it comes to wealth, the United States is one of the richest countries in the world. Wealth is the sum total of a person’s assets. These assets include, cash in the bank and value of all properties, not only land but houses, cars, stocks, and bonds, and retirements savings.
The law officials should be educated more about fraud and increasing more strict sentences. The law enforcement should make it obligatory to report the fraud. 6- In Miller case, the company should separate financial duties of employees which means that the employee who writes the checks should not be the employee who reconciles the bank statement. The company should have stronger internal
He also rationalized his fraudulent activities by hiding the customer’s late payment in order to be benefitted himself, but said that he was helping people more than he was helping himself. 2. Given that Mr. Pavlo’s fraud was restricted to an accounts receivable embezzlement scheme, what symptoms might auditors observe?
EXECUTIVE COMPENSATION Executive compensation is a broad term which comprises of financial compensation and non-financial rewards given to an executive from their firm for their services. This package is decided by a company’s Board of Directors (consisting of independent directors). It should be designed in a manner which incentivizes the executives and motivates them to perform in accordance with the company’s goals and its long term growth. These packages generally include a mix of short-term incentives (including salary, annual bonus, benefits, and perquisites) and long-term incentives (including stock options and restricted shares). E.g. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella received a compensation package of $84.3 million for the software maker’s
A) Introduction Unethical behaviors in business affect everyone since you either work in the field or are a consumer of its services. Unfortunately, almost every company usually has individuals who act unethically whether it is for their personal benefit or for the sake of the company they work for. Unethical behaviors in business might be as simple as using company property or funds for personal gain to inside trading and financial fraud. According to The Chartered Institute of Management Accountants, nearly one third of business professionals feel pressured to compromise their ethical standards and are increasingly pushed towards unethical behavior. Moreover, “misconduct is common and accepted by business services professionals, the integrity of entire economic systems is at risk”, states Jordan A. Thomas, partner and chair of the Whistleblower Representation Practice at Labaton Sucharow law firm.
Executive Summary Lehman Brothers were an investment bank involved in transactions worth billions of dollars and one of the most powerful investment banks in the world. Lehman Brothers collapsed in 2008 following bad investment in the sub-prime mortgage market and used bad accounting practices called Repo 105 transactions to try and cover up the bad assets. This report sets out the use of the fraud triangle when describing the actions which led to the collapse. The pressure applied on the bank, the opportunity due to the lack of regulation to carry out the actions and the ability of the bank to rationalise their decision making.
1. What factors in the WorldCom case support the conclusion that CEO Bernie Ebbers Knew about the financial statement fraud? What factors support his defense that he did not know about the fraud? Bernie Ebbers Knew about the financial statement fraud because he was the one who encourage others to go into financial fraud because of the stock prices were going down, which was affecting his marginal loan. For that reason, he was trying to sell his stock, but the board of Directors lent him $341 million, along with 2% interest rate.
(Johnson , 2014 ) In this case , it shows that under normal circumstances the management level of a company or corporation will choose to hide the truth over honesty and integrity .In other way , profitability has override the important of ethics in the corporation .
The false accounting records were unethical because it means management was enriching themselves. They were getting earnings based on the false availability of funds. They also did this to keep their jobs. When a company is not performing financially well the top positions are the ones usually at risk of being retrenched, as a result of implying the company was financially stable they were protecting their jobs. False accounting also results in duping investors that trust the financial records of the company.
It is easy for those accountants that are unethical to alter the financial records of a company. This makes the company seem to be doing well in the short term, but in the long run, it leads to failure of the company. The other ethical issue is a falsification of documents. Falsification of documents involves changing the details of the documents which are original so that they can appear real ( Bampton and Cowton, 2013, p.552).this is done with the aim of deceiving another person. Some of the documents that are easily falsified are personal checks, tax returns, bank accounts records and birth certificates among others.