Authors: Gary Giroux
ISBN-13: 9780471768555, ISBN-10: 0471768553
Format: Hardcover
Publisher: Wiley, John & Sons, Incorporated
Date Published: April 2006
Edition: (Non-applicable)
GARY GIROUX, CPA, PhD, is Shelton Professor of Accounting at Texas A&M University. He received his PhD from Texas Tech University and has been at Texas A&M for over two-and-a-half decades. Dr. Giroux has published over fifty articles in various professional journals and is the author of Core Concepts of Financial Analysis: A User Approach, Detecting Earnings Management (Wiley), and Dollars & Scholars, Scribes & Bribes: The Story of Accounting.
How can an investor protect his or her stock portfolio? How can an analyst make accurate projections on a company's financial health? Earnings Magic and the Unbalance Sheet: The Search for Financial Reality guides business professionals including corporate financial analysts, practicing accountants, credit analysts, institutional and individual investors, money managers, and commercial bank lenders through the maze of potentially misleading earnings and accounting disclosures to search for financial reality.
With keen insight and state-of-the-art analytical tools, Earnings Magic and the Unbalance Sheet deftly guides the wise investor or analyst on how to best assess corporate financial status and make better financial decisions by recognizing companies with poor and deceptive disclosure practices. This eye-opening book arms the reader with an earnings magic detection strategy that reveals howand whycorporations "fudge" their numbers and explores the factors that point to potentially low earnings.
Author Gary Giroux pulls back the curtain to show how big companieseven in the shadow of changes since the Enron and WorldCom financial fiascos and congressional hearings leading to the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002still use dubious financial maneuvers to manipulate the bottom line and overstate revenue. For the investor who wants to avoid financial lossesand which investor doesn't?this is required reading on the best way to research and read financial reports. Earnings Magic and the Unbalance Sheet: The Search for Financial Reality shows you how to:
Financial deceptions, such as inflated revenues and hidden expenses that are difficult to detect, still takes place in corporations despite new regulations designed to make financial information more reliable and oversight more extensive. Earnings Magic and the Unbalance Sheet equips readers to identify the early warning signs of a company's problems, determine its financial transparency, and estimate its financial reality.
Preface | ix | |
Section 1 | Earnings Magic and the Unbalanced Sheet | 1 |
Chapter 1 | What Is Earnings Magic? Does the Balance Sheet Balance? | 3 |
Chapter 2 | Caught in the Act! | 17 |
Chapter 3 | The New Accounting | 35 |
Chapter 4 | Wading Through the Earnings Numbers | 51 |
Section 2 | The Big 8 and Dirty 30: Key Accounting Issues That Signal Earnings Magic | 71 |
Chapter 5 | Key Accounting Issues: An Overview | 73 |
Chapter 6 | Stock Options | 89 |
Chapter 7 | Pensions and Other Postemployment Benefits | 99 |
Chapter 8 | Revenues | 115 |
Chapter 9 | Earnings, Expenses, and Expectations | 127 |
Chapter 10 | Strange Special Items and Other Things That Should Not Be on the Income Statement | 139 |
Chapter 11 | Treasury Stock and Dividends | 149 |
Chapter 12 | Off-Balance Sheet Items: Operating Leases and Special-Purpose Entities | 159 |
Chapter 13 | Acquisitions and All That Goodwill | 173 |
Chapter 14 | Dishonorable Mention: The Rest of the Dirty 30 | 187 |
Section 3 | Putting It All Together | 221 |
Chapter 15 | Finding Signals of Financial Excellence and Earnings Magic | 223 |
Chapter 16 | A Checklist for Evaluating Financial Excellence | 235 |
Chapter 17 | An Investment Strategy | 251 |
Chapter 18 | Searching for Help: Useful Internet Sites | 265 |
Epilogue | 271 | |
References | 273 | |
Index | 279 |