Certified Public Accountants
Certified Public Accountants are expected to conduct themselves at a higher level than most other members of society and are held to the highest of ethical standards. The American Institute of Certified Public Accountants provides general accepted auditing standards and the code of professional conduct as a framework of guidance for CPAs to follow in performing audit procedures. The following audit case demonstrates potential problems that can occur when the client, Mattel, and the auditing firm, Arthur Anderson, are both at fault.
In 1945, Mattel Inc. was established by Elliot and Ruth Handler and Harold Matson, who shortly after left the company for other employment opportunities. Elliot Handler invented and produced the toy products for Mattel while Ruth Handler oversaw and controlled the financial status of the company. Ten years after Mattel was introduced, its net worth increased to more than $500,000. Ruth decided to launch advertisements on children's television networks. Costs for this project were high but the benefits greatly outweighed them. By 1971 market value reached $300 million and , "financial analysts recognized Mattel as one of the premier growth companies in the United States" (4).
The early 1970's also brought about serious problems for Mattel. The company hired Seymour Rosenberg as the company's executive vice president and chief financial officer. He wanted to make changes in how Mattel operated, so Rosenberg chose to reorganize the structure of the company by breaking down operations into different divisions of business. This process in turn increased operating costs. Rosenberg's investments and decision-making were unsuccessful and he was dismissed from M...
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...fill the agreement by charging an additional $4.4 million in expenses. Arthur Anderson neglected to ask what these expenses included and failed to examine and determine the exact amount of royalties due to the inventor.
Mattel miscalculated an insurance claim for a large warehouse in Mexico that was destroyed by fire. The policy enables Mattel to gain up to $10 million as result of the loss and damages. This total amount was included in the financial statements for the fiscal year ending January 30, 1971. Both Mattel and Arthur Anderson should not have assumed that the full amount would be recovered. "The federal agency argued that the method used by Mattel to compute the amount recoverable from the insurance company, a method approved by Arthur Anderson, was not credible" (10 ). Six years later Mattel was granted only $4.4 million for the insurance claim.
In addition, by deciding not to inform the limited partners of Ed’s deceit, Andrea would be disregarding the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants Code of Professional Conduct in her being unreliable, dishonest and deceitful. Andrea has the responsibility of protecting her client, which involves encouraging the correction of financial statements in order to prevent suspicion during audits that could lead to fines and imprisonment.
In my opinion, if the jury in this case subtracted the contractual claims against the profits, they would have arrived at different damage/entitlement amounts. My guess is Main Line would have been entitled to much less than what was awarded in this case.
(1) When the contract was entered into, was it apparent that damages would be difficult to estimate in the event of a breach? (2) Was the amount set as damages a reasonable estimate and not excessive? (Cross & Miller, 2012)
Case 1: In this case. As a certified public accountant, Erickson oversaw and initiated an arbitrary adjustment to increase cash and decrease accounts receivable. Also, Erickson signed Form 10-K with full knowledge that the financial statements include therein incorporated entries misstating revenues. As we can see from this case, Erickson’s behavior not only violate the Business and Professions Code, Division 3, Chapter 1, § 5100(g) and (i), but also against the ethical theories.
SEC has a significant influence on the audit of Smackey Dog Food, Inc because it sets certain auditing standards that need to be adhered to while conducting and audit of any organization. One of the standards is ensuring a professional independence of auditors as they carry out their audit. Keller CPA would be more objective in their opinion by maintaining independence in all maters and be free from conflict of interest in performing their professional engagement. Thus, although SEC does not possess direct control over privately held companies like Smackey, it, however, sets up generally accounting principles and disclosure requirements for all auditors to follow in order to prevent fraud and misstatement and to ensure fairness to users of audited financial statements for investment purposes or decision making. Therefore, Keller CPA would be required to follow the six generally accepted auditing standards established by ASB of the AICPA with regards to field work and reporting which were established through the influence of SEC.
These methods include the structure of the CPA firm and the procedures established by the firm. The CPA firm follows its specific quality control procedures to help the firm meet auditing standards consistently on every audit engagement. Quality control policies and procedures should be documented by each CPA firm, and the procedures should focus on the size of the firm, the number of offices, and the nature of the practice. The quality control procedures that firms use should address six elements such as leadership responsibilities for quality within the firm, relevant ethical requirements, acceptance and continuation of clients, human resources, engagement performance, and monitoring. CPA firms must also be enrolled in an AICPA approved practice-monitoring program or peer review in order for other CPA firms to determine and report if its quality control system is in effect and
The principles of the AICPA Code of Conduct should guide the work that Jose and Emily do as auditors. The principles that specifically apply to this situation are Responsibilities, The Public Interest, and Due Care. CPAs have the responsibility to “exercise sensitive professional and moral judgments in all activities.” (Mintz, p. 19)
When hard-nosed Harold Geneen drove the growth of ITT during its heyday in the 1960s and '70s, he had a blunt management philosophy: "In business, words are words, explanations are explanations, promises are promises, but only performance is reality." In 2001, when Jim Kilts arrived at Gillette as the first outsider to run the Boston-based company in over 70 years, he found a business with great brands that were losing market share. The company's acquisitions of Duracell and Braun were not delivering, sales and earnings were flat, and the company had missed its earnings estimates for 15 straight quarters. The stock had plummeted, and Wall Street had lost patience. Yet, two-thirds of the top managers were receiving top ratings.
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).
These past few years haven't quite been all fun and games for John Eyler, chairman and CEO of Toys "R" Us. Shortly after joining the company in January 2000, Eyler set about revamping Toys "R" Us to better compete in the marketplace while brushing up the company's image. But a downturn in the economy together with the effects of 9/11, not to mention the West Coast port lockout, wasn't part of the plan.
I chose to write about the short story "A&P." The story takes place in a small town in the late 60's, in a vacation town of sorts with a general store, few residents. What I received from the setting, was a very low maintenance town where "everybody knows everybody" (very tight community) most likely old school beliefs and structures (religion, dress code, ethics, morals, ext strict) and for a short time tourists come to live for a while, and in a sense shake up the foundation of the town a bit with their outside beliefs and values.
This case provides a brief history of management conflict and change at Walt Disney Company. Former CEO Michael Eisner was considered to be controversial because of his abrasive style and tendencies toward micromanagement. It was this style that strained several important relationships to the Disney Company. Though his reign as CEO during the 80’s and 90’s helped advance Disney Company, it was his conflicting management style that led to his demise and the beginning of Robert Iger’s epoch at Disney. Since Iger has taken the helm as CEO Disney was ranked 67th in the Fortune 500 list for largest companies, it has become the largest media conglomerate in the world, and relationships and disputes stemming from Eisner have been reconciled.
However, during the 1990s, Philips and Matsushita both faced major challenges to sustain their position in the market. Changing profile of the industry and globalization forces made Philips and Matsushita’s organizational models and competitive advantages obsolete, and brought up the need for drastic actions. At the brink of a new century, the battle of two giants unraveled with CEOs from both sides implementing another round of strategic initiatives and restructurings. The pressure put on new CEOs was enormous – wrong st...
PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC)is the world’s largest accounting firm and ranks as one of the giants in the global professional services arena. PwC employs over 146,000 people with 766 offices in 150 countries. The Firm is led by Samuel A. DiPiazza, CEO, and is headquartered in New York City on Madison Avenue. Its clients include 84 percent of the Fortune Global 500 companies. Price Waterhouse and Coopers & Lybrand merged in 1998, which made the combined firm the top player in public accounting. In the 2007 fiscal year, PwC had gross revenue of over $25 billion. Structured as a limited liability partnership (LLP), the private company would rank in the low 300s on the Fortune 500 companies.
The evolution of auditing is a complicated history that has always been changing through historical events. Auditing always changed to meet the needs of the business environment of that day. Auditing has been around since the beginning of human civilization, focusing mainly, at first, on finding efraud. As the United States grew, the business world grew, and auditing began to play more important roles. In the late 1800’s and early 1900’s, people began to invest money into large corporations. The Stock Market crash of 1929 and various scandals made auditors realize that their roles in society were very important. Scandals and stock market crashes made auditors aware of deficiencies in auditing, and the auditing community was always quick to fix those deficiencies. The auditors’ job became more difficult as the accounting principles changed, and became easier with the use of internal controls. These controls introduced the need for testing; not an in-depth detailed audit. Auditing jobs would have to change to meet the changing business world. The invention of computers impacted the auditors’ world by making their job at times easier and at times making their job more difficult. Finally, the auditors’ job of certifying and testing companies’ financial statements is the backbone of the business world.