1. Tyco – A Brief Background Tyco International was founded in 1960 and was regarded as an important electrical and electronic components provider, fire protection system maker and electronic security service provider. It is a diverse producing and serving corporation. Tyco has done business in over 1000 locations in 50 countries and hires 69,000 employees around the world (TYCO, 2012). Tyco International has expanded rapidly and broadly since its IPO in 1973 and has numerous companies among the Fortune 500. The firm’s revenue increased from $3.1 billion in 1992 to over $40 billion in 2004, with the firm’s market value estimated at over $100 billion (TYCO, 2012). Tyco has made numerous acquisitions, including 40 acquisitions since the 1980s. 1.1. A Diversified Company Fire and Security Services: This division is made up of two sub-divisions: electronic security services and fire protection contracting and services. The security services …show more content…
Later that year, Dennis Kozlowski resigned. In September of 2002 then-former CEO Dennis Kozlowski, former CFO Mark Swartz, and former General Counsel Mark Belnick were sued for accounting frauds. In 2005 both Dennis Kozlowski and Mark Swartz were sentenced to 8 to 25 years in prison. 2. The Storm: An Accounting Scandal The Tyco accounting scandal is an ideal illustration of how individuals who hold key positions in an organization are able to manipulate accounting practices and financial reports for personal gain. The few key individuals involved in the Tyco Scandal (CEO Kozlowski and CFO Swartz), used a number of clever and unique tactics in order to accomplish what they did; including spring loading, manipulating their ‘key-employee loan’ program, and multiple ‘hush money’ payouts. 2.1. Spring
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.
"NFPA 1710: Standard for the Organization and Deployment of Fire Suppression Operations, Emergency Medical Operations, and Special Operations to the Public by Career Fire Departments, 2010 Edition." National Fire Protection Association. N.p., 1 Jan. 2010. Web. .
Costco Wholesale Corporation was an uncommon type of retailers called wholesale clubs. These clubs differentiated themselves from other retailer by requiring annual membership purchase. Especially in case of Costco, their target market is wealthier clientele of small business owners and middle class shoppers. They are now known as a low cost or discount retailer where they sell products in bulk with limited brands and their own brand. The company is competing with stores like Wal-Mart, SAM’s, BJ’s, and Sears. The case begins with an individual shareholder, Margarita Torres, who first purchased shares in 1997 and who is trying to evaluate the operational performance of the business in order to make a decision rather or not purchase more shares
The duties and responsibilities of the fire department are most importantly responding to fires and other emergencies that involve the assistance from the department such as vehicle accidents, flooding, emergency rescue, and first aid response. When it comes to a fire departments duties and responsibilities when it comes to mutual aid agreements it is to coordinate planning, multiply the response resources available to any one jurisdiction, ensure timely arrival of aid, arrange for specialized resources, and minimize administrative conflict and litigation post-response.
Financial Shenanigans was written by Howard Schilit. The main objective of the book is to show ways companies can alter their financial accounting reports to reflect a much attractive appearance of their company’s health and growth when indeed that company is running into severe trouble. There are different ways the company can accomplish this and the author gives us “Seven Shenanigans” that companies can change the investor’s point of view towards the performance of the company. Basically, he breaks up each chapter to the particular shenanigan and discusses different techniques for achieving each shenanigan. For example, the author used Priceline.com, Cendant/CUC, AOL, and Xerox to illustrate each shenanigan. Chapter 11 and 12 of the book discusses the analyzing of financial reports and how to use financial databases to discover warning signs. Then there is another chapter on finding shenanigans in the company’s annual 10K report and how to find hints for financial shenanigans.
HomeCo needs to consider a new corporate social responsibility strategy, especially when dealing with plastic. They are in a hypercompetitive industry, where corporations are willing to try new marketing techniques to get ahead of their competition and to mention the amount capital some of these corporations have to try in their plastics division. The company should be the innovator of companies where there responsible for both the internal and external aspects of their company. HomeCo is a plastics company, which has built up a substantial market share in UK, and other European countries. The desired strategy for HomeCo is to use their capital to purchase companies internationally, even if it means cutting jobs, and disconcerting shareholders.
Ivan Boesky pleaded guilty to the biggest insider-trading scheme discovered by the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). He made 200 million dollars by profiting from stock-price volatility on corporate mergers. What he actually did was cheat by using illegally obtained secret information about impending mergers to buy and sell stock before mergers became public knowledge/ Although insider trading is nothing new, the SEC knows it has become a threat to the public’s confidence, and they must enforce regulations to stop criminal activity. The SEC has put pressure on managers to regulate information leaks, promising strict legal enforcement if a business fails to police misuse of privileged employee information.
Unethical accounting practices involving Enron date back to 1987. Enron’s use of creative accounting involved moving profits from one period to another to manipulate earnings. Anderson, Enron’s auditor, investigated and reported these unusual transactions to Enron’s audit committee, but failed to discuss the illegality of the acts (Girioux, 2008). Enron decided the act was immaterial and Anderson went along with their decision. At this point, the auditor’s should have reevaluated their risk assessment of Enron’s internal controls in light of how this matter was handled and the risks Enron was willing to take The history of unethical accounting practic...
Though the numbers looked good, the process behind them was questionable. Unbeknownst to many, Jeff Skilling, a top Enron executive, was able to persuade the SEC and their accounting firm, Arthur Anderson & Company, to approve the use of mark-to-market accounting (M2M). This technique allowed the company to report profits from long term contracts up front, before all earnings had actual...
Dowd (2016) runs above and beyond with the clarification to state accounting fraud incorporates the change of accounting records in regards to sales, incomes, costs and different components for a profit motive, for example, boosting organization stock prices, getting ideal financing or maintaining a strategic distance from obligation commitments. Dowd is of the feeling that covetousness, absence of straightforwardness, poor administration data and poor accounting interior controls are a couple of explanations behind accounting fraud. (Dowd,
Sandberg, J., Solomon, D., & Blumenstein, R. (2002, June 27). Accounting Spot-Check Unearthed A Scandal in WorldCom's Books. Retrieved from The Wall Street Journal: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB102512901721030520.html
In 2011 PepsiCo announced the launch of their Social Vending System. This system featured a full touch interactive screen. A consumer can select a beverage and enter the reciepent's name, mobile number, and personalized message and gift it with a video. PepsiCo uses technology to their advantage for global implementation.The company uses media sites in multiple was as advertisement and marketing tools.
The XYZ Corporation was established in 2004 and their main office is located in Vancouver, BC. The company’s main objective is to create new innovating technology for media devices, computers, and digital music players. They deal with the design, manufacturing and marketing of the products. XYZ Corporation has been providing Canadians with groundbreaking technology throughout the years and continues to create new technology to provide others with top-level technology. Although, recently their success rate has appeared to drop rapidly due to a number of factors that will be explored throughout this case study. Their main objective is to target the problems so that they can work towards having the issues resolved as quickly as possible. If they do not take any course of action, the state of the company may be in extreme danger. This case study is designed to explore the areas of the company and discover the problems blocking the XYZ Corporation from success.
Tyco International Ltd was one of the well-renown companies in America for their security systems, fire protection and healthcare. The company was founded in 1960, but it was not until 1964 did Tyco went public to rapidly expand their acquisition. Later in the years, Dennis Kozlowski was employed to the company as an associate controller, which he then moved up to Tyco’s board to become the president and chief operating office. At the same time, the Tyco International decided to change its attention from expansion to revenue. Later on, Kozlowski was appointed as chief executive office (CEO) in 1992; he became a great successor for diversifying the organization into healthcare. In acknowledgement of, Kozlowski hard work he brought Tyco to become the second largest producer of medical devices in North America during 2001, which led them
There are many lessons a business owner can learn from the Andersen/Enron scandal, the only lesson would not be that honesty is the best policy, but also that a dishonest action made by a few people can affect many. Enron’s insider trading and failure to report accurate earnings and losses paired with Andersen’s failure to properly audit and report the company’s debts and earnings made for one of the biggest scandals that the business world has ever seen. Enron used SPE’s or Special Purpose Entities to mask the large amounts of debt that they had acquired overtime