Between 1995 and 2007, financial elites in more than a dozen western European countries engaged in a cross-border battle to create some twenty new stock markets, many of which were explicitly modeled on the American Nasdaq. The resulting high-risk, high-reward markets facilitated wealth creation, rewarded venture capitalists, and drew major U.S. financial players to Europe. But they also chipped away at the European social compacts between national governments and citizens, opening the door of smaller company finance to the broad trend of marketization and its bounties, and further subjecting European households and family businesses to the rhythms of global capital. Elliot Posner explores the causes of Europe’s emergence as a global financial power, addressing classic and new questions about the origins of markets and their relationship to politics and bureaucracy. In doing so, he attributes the surprising large-scale transformation of Europe’s capital markets to the rise of the European Union as a global political force. The effect of Europe’s financial ascendance will have major ramifications around the world, and Posner’s analysis will push market participants, policymakers, and academics to rethink the sources of financial change in Europe and beyond.

This highly regarded reference is relied on by a considerable part of the accounting profession in their day-to-day work. This comprehensive resource is widely recognized and relied on as a single reference source that provides answers to all reasonable questions on accounting and financial reporting asked by accountants, auditors, bankers, lawyers, financial analysts, and other preparers and users of accounting information. The new edition reflects the new FASB Codification, and includes expanded coverage of fair value and guidance on developing fair value estimates, fraud risk and exposure, healthcare, and IFRS.

Are transnational corporations (TNCs) and foreign direct investment beneficial or harmful to societies around the world? Since the birth of the United Nations more than 60 years ago, these questions have been major issues of interest and involvement for UN institutions. What have been the key ideas generated by the UN about TNCs and their relations with nation-states? How have these ideas evolved and what has been their impact? This book examines the history of UN engagement with TNCs, including the creation of the UN Commission and Centre on Transnational Corporations in 1974, the failed efforts of these bodies to craft a code of conduct to temper the revealed abuses of TNCs, and, with the advent of globalization in the 1980s, the evolution of a more cooperative relationship between TNCs and developing countries, resulting in the 1999 Global Compact.

The global financial crisis that began in 2007 was the most destructive since the 1930s. The rapid spread of the crisis across borders and the complexity of these cross-border linkages highlighted the importance for authorities of working together in responding to the crisis. This book examines the transnational response that relied heavily on a set of relatively informal transnational regulatory groupings that had been constructed over previous decades. During the crisis these arrangements were made stronger and more inclusive, but they remain very complex. Thousands of pages of new rules have been created by various transnational bodies, and the implementation of these rules relies heavily on domestic law and regulation and private rules and practices. This book analyses this complex response, showing that its overly technical and incremental character, the persistence of tensions between transnational processes and state-centred politics, and the ongoing power of private actors, have made the regulatory response fall short of what is needed. Transnational Financial Regulation after the Crisis provides new insights that are relevant for theory and practice, not only for transnational financial regulation, but for global governance more generally.

A Brookings Institution Press and American Enterprise Institute publication A few years ago, Americans held out their systems of corporate governance and financial disclosure as models to be emulated by the rest of the world. But in late 2001 U.S. policymakers and corporate leaders found themselves facing the largest corporate accounting scandals in American history. The spectacular collapses of Enron and Worldcom—as well as the discovery of accounting irregularities at other large U.S. companies—seemed to call into question the efficacy of the entire system of corporate governance in the United States. In response, Congress quickly enacted a comprehensive package of reform measures in what has come to be known as the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. The New York Stock Exchange and the NASDAQ followed by making fundamental changes to their listing requirements. The private sector acted as well. Accounting firms—watching in horror as one of their largest, Arthur Andersen, collapsed after a criminal conviction for document shredding—tightened their auditing procedures. Stock analysts and ratings agencies, hit hard by a series of disclosures about their failings, changed their practices as well. Will these reforms be enough? Are some counterproductive? Are other shortcomings in the disclosure system still in need of correction? These are among the questions that George Benston, Michael Bromwich, Robert E. Litan, and Alfred Wagenhofer address in Following the Money. While the authors agree that the U.S. system of corporate disclosure and governance is in need of change, they are concerned that policymakers may be overreacting in some areas and taking actions in others that may prove to be ineffective or even counterproductive. Using the Enron case as a point of departure, the authors argue that the major problem lies not in the accounting and auditing standards themselves, but in the system of enforcing those standards.

Now in its 14th edition, Nobes and Parker's Comparative International Accounting is a comprehensive and coherent text on international financial reporting. It is primarily designed for undergraduate and postgraduate courses in comparative and international aspects of financial reporting. The book explores the conceptual and contextual found.

Covers the evolution of accounting, financial reporting and related institutions for major economies in the world. This title addresses ten European economies, including France, Germany, Italy and the UK as well as the Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, Poland, Sweden, and Switzerland.