Issues Facing Stakeholders and Top Management
Given the large scale manipulation in the company’s accounts and misconduct within the organization, the name Satyam (which means “truth” in Sanskrit) hardly seems appropriate. “It was like riding a tiger, not knowing how to get off without being eaten.” That is how Chairman Raju described how the company inflated profits for years. The admission of the biggest corporate scandal in India’s history has drawn swift comparisons with Enron, which quickly went from being one of the United States’ most admired companies to a ward of the bankruptcy court after accounting fraud came to light. The media has latched onto the Satyam controversy mercilessly, labeling it "India's Enron moment" and a "shame and scandal." Satyam’s image has been tarnished by the scandal and as lost the confidence of clients, investors, and employees alike. Thus, the key challenge facing top management is repairing the damaged reputation of the organization and regaining the trust of the public, an obstacle that Enron executives were not able to overcome.
The issue of violating corporate governance had been raised even before the company’s fraudulent accounting practices became known. Previous actions threw up red flags and caused investors and clients to become wary of the organization, such as Satyam’s dubious $1.6 billion takeover plan of two sister companies that caused the company’s stock to plunge by over 55 percent and resulted in the resignation of three board members. So, the announcement less than a month later that acknowledged the fact that top management officials “cooked the books” inevitably turned investors away and will sent clients to competitors like Infosys, TCS, and Wipro.. Given the company’s extreme betrayal it will be difficult, if not impossible, for Satyam to regain the trust that was loss.
However, it is not just Satyam alone that will face challenges due to the company’s scandal. The size and scope of the fraud raises questions about regulatory oversight in India as a whole. The scandal is likely to result in a loss of confidence of foreign investors in India, at least in the short-term. Observers may be pressed to know whether similar problems might lie buried elsewhere. The fraud has put a question mark on the entire corporate governance system in India. As a result, the risk premium for Indian companies may rise in the eyes of investors. Also, other stakeholders, such as Pricewaterhouse Coopers who was the company’s auditor, will have to engage in damage control due to their association with Satyam.
When it comes to the audit objectives, the public and the auditing profession maintain varying expectations. The public expects the prevention of fraud to be the auditor’s responsibility. However, the auditors believe that they are responsible for fraud detection, but not obliged to find all of it. In addition, the public views the fraud by the characteristics displayed by management and employees. For example, WoolEx Mills’ management wanted to exude a prevailing financial position and to uphold reputations. By committing financial statement fraud, it made the company look successful even though Sales and cash flows were decreasing. The public would view these particular characteristics as pressures to why the company committed fraud. Greed, recognition, and influences also impacted the public’s view of Wool Ex Mills’ fraud scheme. The CEO used authority to influence employees to take part in the fraud scheme. The public would see that the CEO utilized power to manipulate shareholders, which impacted their trust with WoolEx Mills (Cohen, Ding, Lesage, & Stolowy 2015) (Krishnan & Shah
On the surface, the motives behind decisions and events leading to Enron’s downfall appear simple enough: individual and collective greed born in an atmosphere of market euphoria and corporate arrogance. Hardly anyone—the company, its employees, analysts or individual investors—wanted to believe the company was too good to be true. So, for a while, hardly anyone did. Many kept on buying the stock, the corporate mantra and the dream. In the meantime, the company made many high-risk deals, some of which were outside the company’s typical asset risk control process. Many went sour in the early months of 2001 as Enron’s stock price and debt rating imploded because of loss of investor and creditor trust. Methods the company used to disclose its complicated financial dealings were all wrong and downright deceptive. The company’s lack of accuracy in reporting its financial affairs, followed by financial restatements disclosing billions of dollars of omitted liabilities and losses, contributed to its downfall. The whole affair happened under the watchful eye of Arthur Andersen LLP, which kept a whole floor of auditors assigned at Enron year-round.
I am writing to address some concerns I have about the future of your company, Martha Stewart Omnimedia (MSO). Perhaps the one issue that you are grappling with at present is about the Imclone scandal. You have been accused of selling $227,000 worth of Imclone stock based on inside information. Because of these charges of insider trading, your critics have summarily associated you with other disgraced company directors: Kenneth Lay of Enron and Bernard Ebbers of WorldCom. But the strange thing about your case is that while other CEOs have been charged for making use of their own companies to gain profit for themselves, you, on the other hand, have not purposefully misled investors or doctored MSO’s accounts.
It has been a decade since the Sarbanes-Oxley Act became in effect. Obviously, the SOX Act which aimed at increasing the confidence in the US capital market really has had a profound influence on public companies and public accounting firms. However, after Enron scandal which triggered the issue of SOX Act, public company lawsuits due to fraud still emerged one after another. As such, the efficacy of the 11-year-old Act has continually been questioned by professionals and public. In addition, the controversy about the cost and benefit of Sarbanes-Oxley Act has never stopped.
...ns and the company’s fair-value accounting resulting in restatements of merchant investments based on faulty numbers. Additional violations included Enron’s accounting for stock issued to SPE’s, inadequate disclosure of related party transactions, and conflicts of interest and their cost to stockholders. These violations of GAAP and GAAs standards ultimately lead to the demise of a once mighty company (Benston, The Quality of Corporate Financial Statements and Their Auditors before and after Enron). The importance of consistently keeping up with accounting principles and producing accurate numbers for a company’s are exemplified through Enron’s story. The company faced an unfortunate fate that could have easily been avoided through more efficient and effective management, proper accounting methods, and a higher standard of morals and ethics within the workplace.
The Sarbanes-Oxley Act is a legislation aimed at increasing the accuracy of financial statements that were issued by companies that are publicly held (Livingstone, 2011). The passing of this act was a response to some of the financial malpractices that took place at companies such as WorldCom and Enron. According to Livingstone, making ethical decisions is critical because ethical lapses can lead to severe unforeseen consequences (Livingstone, 2011). This paper will discuss the effects of the Act on the audit committees of public company boards of directors as well as outside independent audit firms. The main advantages and disadvantages of the Act and recommendations of the changes that should be made to the act will also be included.
As you know many successful company always have fraud scandals or it still not happen yet that significant impact to society and other industries. Toshiba and Mahindra Satyam (formerly Satyam Computer Services Limited) is a sample scandal of two companies which cause the biggest fraud accounting . Toshiba is a diversified electric, electronic manufacturer and provides a wide range of products and services globally .Toshiba has found in Tokyo in 1875 and quickly become a large company with more than 187,800 employees and $ 50,165 US million of revenue in 2016. While Satyam was found in 1987 ,company was initially a family owned Business Company which offered consulting ,and information technology services spanning various sectors and successfully became
Building standards of ethical behavior is essential for public company. Otherwise, it causes accounting scandals and bankrupts. Over the last decade, there were a lot of enormous bankrupts that because of unethical behavior of investors and auditors. Lehman Brothers Holding Inc. is an example of accounting scandals. In this research paper, I am going to analyze this firm.
As a result of which law suits was filed in US contesting Maytas deal. The World Bank banned Satyam from conducting business for 8 years due to inappropriate payments to staff and inability to provide information sought on invoices. Four independent directors quit the Satyam Board and SEBI ordered promoters to disclose pledged shares to stock exchange.
The company concealed huge debts off its balance sheet, which resulted in overstating earnings. Due to an understatement of debts, the company was considered bankrupt in 2001. Shareholders lost $74 billion and a lot of jobs were lost because of the bankruptcy. The share prices of Enron started falling in 2000 and in 2001 the company revealed a huge loss. Even after all this, the company’s executives told the investors that the stock was just undervalued and they wanted their investors to keep on investing. The investors lost trust in the company as stock prices decreased, which led the company to file bankruptcy in December 2001. This shows how a lack of transparency in reporting of financial statements leads to the destruction of a company. This all happened under the watchful eye of an auditor, Arthur Andersen. After this scandal, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act was changed to keep into account the role of the auditors and how they can help in preventing such
Phar-Mor was known as one of the major discount chain retailers in the late 1980’s - early 1990’s. It was founded by Mickey Monus, a gambler in nature, who with the help of senior management was “cooking the books” for years to cover up his loses. The reason why senior management agreed to do this fraud is the belief in unique ability of their leader to fix everything later on. This case is known as one of the biggest accounting frauds in the corporate history of the U.S. This paper will analyze who was affected by this fraud, the motives behind it and what systems of control failed to prevent it.
Throughout the past several years major corporate scandals have rocked the economy and hurt investor confidence. The largest bankruptcies in history have resulted from greedy executives that “cook the books” to gain the numbers they want. These scandals typically involve complex methods for misusing or misdirecting funds, overstating revenues, understating expenses, overstating the value of assets or underreporting of liabilities, sometimes with the cooperation of officials in other corporations (Medura 1-3). In response to the increasing number of scandals the US government amended the Sarbanes Oxley act of 2002 to mitigate these problems. Sarbanes Oxley has extensive regulations that hold the CEO and top executives responsible for the numbers they report but problems still occur. To ensure proper accounting standards have been used Sarbanes Oxley also requires that public companies be audited by accounting firms (Livingstone). The problem is that the accounting firms are also public companies that also have to look after their bottom line while still remaining objective with the corporations they audit. When an accounting firm is hired the company that hired them has the power in the relationship. When the company has the power they can bully the firm into doing what they tell them to do. The accounting firm then loses its objectivity and independence making their job ineffective and not accomplishing their goal of honest accounting (Gerard). Their have been 379 convictions of fraud to date, and 3 to 6 new cases opening per month. The problem has clearly not been solved (Ulinski).
The Enron scandal resulted in other new compliance measures. Additionally, the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) substantially raised its levels of ethical conduct. Moreover, company 's boards of directors became more independent, monitoring the audit companies and quickly replacing bad managers. These new measures are important mechanisms to spot and close the loopholes that companies have used, as a way to avoid
The reasons for fraud all surrounded Satyam attempted to meet investor’s expectations. As Raju wrote in his letter to the board of directors, the gap between actual operating profit and the one listed in the books began to grow exponentially. As mentioned earlier, promoters owned a small percentage of Satyam, where foreign and domestic investors owned the greatest percentage. If Satyam slightly revealed its poor performance, it could result in a takeover revealing the company’s poor
Due to such lack of monitoring, management continued to be unaware of such transactions that continued to impact the company negatively. This provided the Rigas family many opportunities to override controls since the lack of corporate governance enabled the decisions to be made by Rigas family without oversight. For example, the article “Adelphia Officials are Arrested, Charged with ‘Massive’ Fraud” discuses how Timothy Rigas had to limit himself to $1 million a month of compensation that was withdrawn from the company for personal use. All decisions were continuously made by such members of the family, in which case for Adelphia, was the team of management. With the lack of controls creating opportunity, they were free to do what they wished- which is something they took incredible advantage