What Is Big Bath Techniques (Cosmetic?

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4. Big Bath” Techniques (Cosmetic):
A big bath is an accounting term defined by a management team's strategy of manipulating a company's income statement to make poor results look even worse to make future results better (Big bath technique, 2015). It is often implemented in a bad year for a company to enhance the next year's earnings in an artificial manner. Prepaying expenses and taking write-offs are particularly useful in a big bath scenario. A company may decide to restructure or completely eliminate a subsidiary, branch or operation. Managers are permitted by GAAP to record an estimate charge against the income thus they can record a higher charge to dissimulate other charges. (Levitt, 1998). Banks are very prone to rising delinquency and higher default rates on loans especially when the economy gets into recession and unemployment rises like the case is …show more content…

Shrink the ship / Stock buybacks (Real):
Since there’s no income recognized on the repurchase of company’s own shares, companies do not have to report any gain or loss for such a transaction since it is considered an internal act by GAAP but companies will report higher Earnings per Share (EPS). For example if a company has 1Million shares valued at UGX4 billion. It means that the earnings per share (EPS) will be 4,000,000,000/1,000,000 making it UGX4,000. If the company decides to buy back 200,000 shares, the same earnings will be divided by the remaining 800,000 shares which will make the EPS increase to UGX5, 000.

FACTORS THAT MOTIVATE PREPARERS OF FINANCIAL STATEMENTS TO MANAGE EARNINGS AGGRESSIVELY.
Management/Preparers of financial statements may have a number of factors that motivate them to manage earnings aggressively. The ultimate motive for earnings management, however, is to aesthetically enhance the performance of a company in the eyes of its stakeholders (Essays, UK,

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