Archive | 2002 Reports

2002:  Accounting Issues Review & Preview  The corporate calamities of 2002 dramatically affected the workload of the FASB. While its docket was full going into the year, what's surprising is that quite a few of its completed projects were …

 
Panicking Over Pensions:  35 Frequently Asked Questions  The year 2002 has been one scary ride for investors and analysts. Not only did the threat of terrorism lurk in the real world, equally hidden dangers emerged from the financial statements …

Low Road, High Road: Recognizing Stock Compensation:  After Coca-Cola took the plunge in July and announced its intention to begin treating compensation paid in stock options as an expense, good corporate citizen wannabes raced to join the party. …

Restructurings: Changes On Charges In The Works:  There seems to be a "flavor of the month" when it comes to accounting issues in the press. Right now, it's employee stock options accounting; a few short months ago, it was …

Accounting Essentials:  Compensation Paid In Stock Options:  Since Coca-Cola's surprise announcement that they would begin to record the compensation expense related to stock options, there's been a spasm of corporate "me-tooism." Concurrently, the accounting standard-setters have been working on …

Rounding Up Stray SPE's:  FASB's New Approach:  If the investment world is lost in an ever-expanding universe of accounting scandals, then remember where the Big Bang started all of it: Enron. That company's artful use of special purpose entities, …

2001 Stock Compensation:  500 The Hard Way:  Kozlowski. Rigas. Ebbers. What do the names have in common? They belong to three men who've been ousted from their positions of power. They've all been laid low by the self-dealing transactions …

Pondering Pensions, 2001:  The Face Of The Shmoo:  Pension plans are omnipresent in their effects on corporate earnings. Like steady drumming tracks add rhythm to a pop song, pension plan accounting makes for a solid backbeat under the more …

Reform Roadmap: You Are Here:  Where reform efforts will end up is an entirely different matter. Since the Enron affair picked up steam in January, politicians of all stripes have reacted with proposals of all kinds. It's only natural: …

Securitization Accounting: Statement 140, One Year Later:  Since the 1970's, the practice known as "securitization" has become increasingly popular. The recipe goes something like this: take a bunch of loans, all one kind, be they mortgages, auto loans, commercial …