"A must-read for any investor serious about knowing what they own. With the help of some of the best financial detectives, Michelle Leder provides a roadmap for delving beneath the surface –– where most investors dare not tread."
–Herb Greenberg, Columnist, TheStreet.com and Fortune magazine

"Obfuscators beware! Michelle Leder has cracked the code. In this invaluable guide to combing the footnotes of financial statements for indicators of accounting tricks and attempts to hide the bad news needles in a haystack of numbers. This is a clear, sensible, and, above all, practical guide that will be indispensable for anyone who invests in, does business with, or works for a corporation."
–Nell Minow, Editor, The Corporate Library

"Too many companies would prefer that you not read the footnotes," observes former SEC chairman Arthur Levitt. "That should be incentive enough to delve into them." In fact, not only do companies prefer you ignore the details they are required to report–the pesky particulars on exactly how they account for those whopping earnings–they take calculated steps to make this information as hard as possible to understand. But for those who know how to look, the facts that predict a company’s true prospects are usually hidden in plain sight.

Financial Fine Print gives you the tools you need to break down annual reports and SEC filings, make sense of the deliberately cryptic language of footnotes, and get the real goods on a potential investment.

To make money in today’s tough market, investors have to make deliberate, well-researched choices. To do this requires not only having the right information, but also knowing how to decode it. With their obscuring tactics, companies won’t help you any. So be advised: those who would help themselves–and expect to profit–should get down to the nitty-gritty of Financial Fine Print.

With the help of industrialist Andrew Carnegie, the author of this remarkable book spent two decades interviewing hundreds of people renowned for their wealth and achievement. He distills the collective wisdom of Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, John D. Rockefeller, and others, offering priceless advice on positive thinking and overcoming adversity.

Giving voice to the marginalized, broadly defined, is the aim of this volume in its examination of social life increasingly marked by global inequality and the extension of market rationalities to all arenas. Revealing the outcome to populations, stakeholders, and the environment when policies resting on narrowly constrained logics are employed, these researchers lead the way in probing accountings participation in significant struggles of our times. In order to better appreciate the consequences of economic globalization, the works examine contemporary rhetoric, governance, politics, and strategies and the manner in which accounting technologies are integrated. These works maintain that transformation is inevitable and they search for possibilities of change that can be manifested in socially equitable practices and improved social justice by enhancing accountability.

Advances in Management Accounting (AIMA) publishes well-developed articles on a variety of current topics in management accounting that are relevant to researchers in both practice and academe. As one of the premier management accounting research journals, AIMA is well poised to meet the needs of management accounting scholars.
Featured in Volume 16 are articles on: Value-Creation Models For Value-Based Management: Review, Analysis, And Research Directions; Performance Standards And Managers Adoption Of Risky Projects; The Effects Of Organizational Culture On Budgetary Conflict: Integrative Versus Distributive Conflict Resolution; The Intervening Effect Of Information Asymmetry On Budget Participation And Segment Slack; Do Accounting Performance Measures Indeed Reduce Managerial Ambiguity Under Uncertainty; Capacity Utilization And The Befcu Model: A Field Study; An Application Of The American Productivity And Quality Center Approach To The Evaluation Of Hospital Performance; The Application Of The Verified Perceptual Bias To Negative Compensation Situations In Management Accounting Research; Activity-Based Cost Management And Manufacturing, Operational And Financial Performance: A Structural Equation Modelling Approach; Team Performance Measurement: A System To Balance Innovation And Empowerment With Control; An Experiment Of Group Association, Firm Performance, And Decision Dissemination Influences On Compensation; A Note On The Readability Of Professional Materials For Management Accountants.
Researchers in both practice and academe, as well as libraries, would be interested in the articles featured in the AIMA.
Advances in Management Accounting is now available online atScienceDirect full-text online of volumes 11 onwards.

This set gathers together 45 out-of-print works examining many areas in accounting history. Books analyse recent events in accounting, as well as focus on the very earliest days of the profession and its subsequent development. Key figures and their ideas are discussed as is the evolution of accounting thought and practices. Taken together, these books offer a wide-ranging overview of the history of accounting around the world.

Die Verschmelzung als wirtschaftlich und rechtlich engste Form der Unternehmensverbindung stellt in einer dynamischen Wirtschaft ein nie an Aktualität einbüßendes Thema dar. Umfassend und fachübergreifend werden neben betriebswirtschaftlichen auch handels- und gesellschaftsrechtliche Aspekte sowie steuerliche Fragestellungen betrachtet. Dabei bildet die Darstellung des Verschmelzungsvorgangs in Handelsbilanzen von Überträgerin und Übernehmerin den Schwerpunkt der Analyse. Das Bewertungswahlrecht zwischen Buchwertverknüpfung und Anschaffungskostenansatz der Übernehmerin in § 24 UmwG wird ausführlich für verschiedene Gegenleistungen untersucht. Durch zahlreiche Beispiele, Tabellen und Abbildungen ist das Buch für Wissenschaft und Praxis gleichermaßen geeignet.

"The Global Accounting History" four volume set aims to establish a benchmark reference source that covers the evolution of accounting, financial reporting and related institutions for all major economies in the world in a comparable way. Volume One addresses ten European economies, including France, Germany, Italy and the UK as well as the Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, Poland, Sweden, and Switzerland. Each chapter is authored by a specialist from the country concerned.

Returning to its roots in activism and economic justice, this issue exposes accounting practice as a contested terrain by examining its role as a social force encompassing issues of value, governance, ethics, politics, and class. Arguing that the view of the discipline as objective and fair is a myth, these papers illuminate the detrimental social consequences of failing to recognize accounting??'s role in the social environment. Investigating accounting's use of ???independence??? as a protective shield in obscuring winners and losers regarding financial activity, the papers illustrate accounting??'s contribution to the failures of free markets worldwide: systemic global poverty, questionable privatization of public enterprises and public goods, and greater divides between so-called first and third world nations. Revealing the integrated nature of regulation, accounting, and ethics, the papers in this volume question the logic of merely fine tuning current systems proposing instead visionary and innovative change by probing deeply into our beliefs, social practices, and consciousness.

The challenges posed by the non-liquidity and non-diversity of the Islamic debts market make the market an inefficient tool on contributing to Muslim economic growth. Islamic scholars and experts created sukuk as an Islamic debt instrument to avoid riba (usury), but the sukuk market (especially in the Gulf) still struggles with the prohibition of the trade of debt due to the prohibition of the two Fiqh Academies. Trading and securitizing debts should be permitted in Islamic law, with one condition, that the debt should be considered low risk. This new rule, the permissibility of trading debts, is supported by three Islamic legal bases, istishab, qiyas, and maslaha, which are recognized by all four Islamic schools of legal thought. Furthermore, permitting the trading of debts is more consistent with the principles and theories of Islamic law than is forbidding it. It is consistent with the obligations theory that debt is a personal right. It is consistent with the mal (property) theory that debt may be sold according to the three Islamic schools of legal thought, all of which consider debt as property. It is consistent with other modern Islamic financial transactions that are permitted by the two Fiqh Academies, such as tawarruq and murabaha.

In the latest volume of Advances in Taxation, series editor John Hasseldine compiles cutting-edge, peer-reviewed studies from expert contributors to explore topics such as: the effects of level of government on trust in revenue agencies; whether understanding tax laws reduces charitable giving; the link between distributive justice and tax fairness judgements; the role of states' R&D tax credits effectiveness in business location; and consumption tax collection on cross-border online sales. Two further contributions separately study the role of designated permanently reinvested earnings (PRE) in the financial statements of multinational corporations. This volume is an exploration of the latest issues in tax and taxation theory, including empirical studies using a variety of research methods from different institutional settings and contexts. It is essential reading for anyone interested in tax policy and its impact in practice.

Too long? Too boring? Read by nobody? A thankless task? A bad report, maybe. Done well, however, the annual report is the vital calling card of any listed company. But how to do it well? How should it be put together and what should it say? What are the tips, tricks and secrets of producing what is often the first port of call for investors, and increasingly, other stakeholders? In this comprehensive new book, reporting and communications expert Claire Bodanis has brought together a team of specialists to produce a detailed how-to guide for this most difficult of corporate documents. Taking the principle of 'if you understand why you're doing something you'll do it better', Trust me, I'm listed reveals the hows, whys and wherefores of corporate reporting, from the art of how to tell a great (and true) story while keeping the regulators (and box tickers) happy, to how to work well with your agency, to how to manage senior stakeholders to meet the deadlines. It also includes a special addendum with tips on how to get the annual report done while working remotely. This book is a must-read for any company secretary, and any corporate reporter.

Advances in Management Accounting publishes thoughtful, well-developed articles across a broad spectrum of current topics in the field of management accounting, using a variety of research methods including survey research, field tests, corporate case studies and modeling. Volume 25 exemplifies the broad scope of Advances in Management Accounting, examining a number of key areas in management accounting.

Basic accounting for non-accountants is an introductory text that covers both financial accounting and cost and management accounting. It is designed to equip students with a sound basic knowledge of both accounting fields. This title is ideally suited for students with little or no prior accounting background. It can be used for short courses, company in-house training programmes as well as individuals who wish to teach themselves. The title covers a wide range of topics relating to accountancy including: drawing up a basic financial statement; interpreting financial statements using ratio analysis; calculating the cost of products; preparing budgets; making short-term decisions. Each chapter concludes with a variety of tutorial exercises, including multiple-choice and discussion questions to test the student's knowledge and comprehension. A solutions manual is available from the publisher for instructors who prescribe the text.

"Cutting Edge Internal Auditing" provides guidance and knowledge for every internal auditor, encouraging each to pioneer new ground in the development of their professional practices in all risk management, control and governance processes.

Serving as an excellent reference guide that develops a pattern of internal auditing now and for the future, this book explores the concept of "'cutting edge'" internal auditing as an imaginative adventure: demonstrating how this has influenced and will continue to influence the development of professionalism in internal auditing.

Built on the foundations of Jeffrey Ridley's extensive internal auditing experience across the public and private sectors, the author uses his articles and research to explore and develop the motivations, goals and categories of innovation in internal auditing today. It develops and brings up to date an imaginative internal auditing model, created and used by the author in the early 1980s, drawing on research and guidance by The Institute of Internal Auditors Inc., its Research Foundation and the Institute of Internal Auditors - UK and Ireland.

Each chapter stands alone by focusing on an individual internal auditing theme, considered from both the perspective of internal auditing and its customers to suggest an appropriate vision as a goal for every internal audit activity. Each chapter also includes self-assessment questions to challenge the readers understanding of its messages.

Accompanied by a CD ROM containing some of the author's training slides and seventy case studies, many written by leading internal audit practitioners, this book creates a vision for future cutting edge internal auditing.

Organizations are networks of conversations. In this groundbreaking book for executives, managers, coaches and educators, follow a new manager in a large organization, as she transforms her conversational capabilities with the help of an executive coach into an effective, visionary leader. Conversational capability is one of, if not the most important capabilities an individual or organization can possess. It is also the most challenging to measure and improve. From spouses and children in morning routines to bosses, employees and coworkers at the workplace to clients, customers, suppliers, and so on, conversations either rule our days completely or simply serve as clear boundaries to their success or failure. Conversational competency is at the heart of leadership, coaching, mentoring and creating sustainable value. Conversation Innovation is a compelling and engaging text at the forefront of this critically important subject matter. It is suited for corporate, academic and executive coaching audiences.

The Handbook of Commercial Mortgage-Backed Securities is a cornerstone reference in this emerging sector of the structured finance market. This Second Edition provides updated coverage of the market, the instruments, the tools used to assess these securities, and tax accounting issues.
In addition to an overview of the commercial real estate finance and commercial property markets, this book also covers property-market framework for bond investors, the role of the servicer, an investor's perspective on commercial mortgage-backed coupon strips, defaults on commercial mortgages, assessing credit risk, an options approach to valuation and risk analysis, legal perspectives on disclosure issues, and federal income taxation.

In the banking industry, inaccurate record keeping can generate negative consequences. By developing solutions to address such issues, financial reporting initiatives can be optimized. Accountancy and the Changing Landscape of Integrated Reporting is a pivotal reference source for the latest research findings on the development of a framework for integrated reporting within the accountancy profession. Featuring extensive coverage on relevant areas such as corporate social responsibility, financial performance, and corporate reporting, this publication is an ideal resource for academics, researchers, graduate-level students, and professionals across the fields of management, economics, and finance.

Due to the developments in the role of governments, the importance of government accounting and financial reporting is increasing. This led to changes in Government Accounting all over the world. For institutional, public finance and other reasons this has not always been done for central governments and regional and local governments in the same way. Some countries maintain the cash basis, some changed over to the accrual basis. Many of them started at first with lower government levels, only few changed over completely. Comparative Issues in Government and Accounting aims to give insight in the array of different patterns the world shows with respect to government accounting and financial reporting. Of course a complete overview would have been too ambitious a goal. This book brings together an interesting number of academics coming from a representative number of countries to get an impression of the situation and especially of the existence and the backgrounds of similarities and differences. Thirty-five authors and co-authors produced 21 chapters reflecting on the situations in 16 countries on 4 continents. Countries dealt with are Albania, Australia, Belgium, China, Egypt, Finland, France, Japan, The Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Russia, Spain, the United Kingdom and the United States.

In an era of fierce international competition, manufacturing firms must have a thorough understanding of their cost structure and how that structure relates to pricing and product mix decisions. Two competing conceptual approaches to designing product cost systems that support decision making are Activity-based Costing and the Theory of Constraints. Rather than argue in favor of one to the exclusion of the other, Robert J. Campbell presents a new approach to cost system design that combines the strengths of each school of thought, thereby overcoming the significant limitations of each. The need to price the product mix in order to exploit constrained resources is advocated by the Theory of Constraints, while the need to examine resource consumption from activities, both value adding and non-value adding, to support the principles of JIT is advocated by Activity-based Costing.

After examining the nature of a firM's cost structure as it relates to the activities performed by various functional areas, Campbell discusses the development of activity-based cost systems through an extensive example. Activity-based costing can lead to building excessively complex accounting systems that lack focus and provide confusion about short-run versus long-run changes in the cost structure. After a chapter examining short-run cost behavior and cost relationships, an in-depth discussion of the Theory of Constraints and how it is contrasted to, and complemented by, activity-based costing follows. In these middle chapters the strengths of each methodology are identified and combined into a unified approach to product cost systems. Later chapters provide discussion on pricing strategies, customer profitability analysis, and providing cost measures that recognize either loss of learning or volume-related efficiencies in machine-paced organizations. This book is an important resource for executives or consultants seeking to implement new cost management systems that lead to improved decision making, as well as for educators seeking to reconcile and understand Activity-based Costing and the Theory of Constraints.

Worldcom, Enron, Parmalat...a succession of financial scandals have made front page news throughout the world in recent times. In this book, the author investigates the origin of creative accounting and explains how and why some companies use these shortcuts to cover different needs. "Creative Accounting Exposed" is written in a clear, enjoyable style with a wealth of case studies.

Hardbound. This series rose out of the belief that the international accounting literature should devote more attention to the study of the accounting problems and issues of emerging economies (developing and newly industrialized countries).The desire of the series is to raise the level of interest in the specific problems of accounting in emerging economies and raise the awareness of the real issues, so that accounting in these countries will not be seen as a matter of copying what is done in industrialized countries. Through an increasing awareness of the real issues and the accounting practices advocated in it, the annual has become relevant to actual needs, and is making a real contribution to the accounting development process of emerging economies.

Financial reporting is a strategic means of communication: management has an opportunity to interpret, and the power to deliver, what is materially important to the organization's stakeholders. Understanding materiality means steering the company in the right direction, and many internal management battles regarding what and how to disclose in external financial reporting run on the verge of materiality. This book offers an integrated perspective of materiality from the angles of accounting (IFRS, US GAAP and SEC Rules and Regulations), auditing, internal control over financial reporting, management commentary, financial analysis, management control, forensic analysis, sustainability reporting, corporate responsibility, assurance standards, integrated reporting, and limited legal considerations. In Materiality in Financial Reporting: An Integrative Perspective, the author adopts a practical, operational approach to show how strategy, processes, and communication can be used to devise a consistent corporate governance system of materiality.