J. Ralph Byington

The C-Suite and Fraud

Fraud committed by the C-suite is a secret that is rarely discussed. However, C-suite fraud happens with enough regularity to be a major concern for firms (Darvall-Stevens, 2015). The financial debacles of Enron Corporation, Tyco International, WorldCom, and Satyam Computer Services, Ltd. taught us that the C-suite can certainly play a major role in perpetrating white-collar crime (WCC). In each of these environments, the C-suite was either directly or indirectly involved in creating and or approving fraudulent financial statements as well as committing other types of fraud. These actions came at great cost to the firms and those involved with the firms: investors; creditors; and employees, both current and retired. The purpose of this article is to suggest possible safeguards and remedies that an organization can implement to prevent and detect C-suite fraud in order to eliminate the potential cost of WCC for the organization.

ISO 14000: Environmental auditing for the manufacturing sector

A new set of environmental management and auditing standards will impact manufacturing companies. The authors explain the new standards, and then discuss what measures manufacturing firms are actually taking based on a survey. They also review the applicability of the new standards to publicly-held manufacturers.

FAS 109: More complex judgment required for accounting for income taxes

FAS 109, “Accounting for Income Taxes,” is the result of a significant effort by the Financial Accounting Standards Board to address the concerns of preparers and users of financial statements. The new standard recognizes the likelihood of recognition of deferred taxes and in particular of the benefit of deferred tax assets. More guidance is provided for the recognition of deferred tax assets in the form of negative and positive evidence. Examples are presented that illustrate the application of the new standard to various typical problems of accounting for income taxes.

Asset‐backed securities: Solutions to accounting and reporting problems

Bundling assets to form tradable securities was one of the more innovative strategies of the 1980s. But there has been continuing controversy about how to report asset-backed financial transactions. The authors take a comprehensive look at the issues and show how to handle the problems you may encounter.

Modernizing the net present value model

Abstract Accounting courses typically emphasize discrete rather than the more realistic continuous discounting and compounding approaches for computing net present values, assume that the reinvestment rate is also the same as the discount rate, and ignore intermediate net present values which can alter the capital budgeting decision. This note presents different techniques for computing net present values by using continuous discounting combined with terminal values. In addition, a bailout payback technique contrasting a “conservative” and “liberal” approach to computing intermediate net present values is presented.