Public confidence in financial statements may be at an all-time low. The bankruptcy of Enron, the largest bankruptcy in United States history, brings into question whether the accounting profession, and the auditing process in particular, protects the users of financial statements. The shower of scandals and earnings restatements makes users skeptical of the financial reporting rules that are supposed to protect the public. In addition, a lack of transparency in reporting followed by restated financial restatements disclosing billions of dollars of omitted liabilities and losses exacerbate this problem. This paper considers the frequency and nature of Form 8-K reports that are filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) by Fortune 500 companies during 2001. This form is used to report the occurrence of any material events or corporate changes which are of importance to investors or security holders and previously have not been reported by the registrant. Information from Form 8-K is analyzed to identify which companies filed 8-K reports, the types of disclosures that are included, industry characteristics of companies that file 8-K reports, whether financial statements were restated as a result of those filings, the reasons that restatements, if any, were required, and the relationship between size of company and number of restatements.

The study revealed poor financial reporting quality among Mongolian Stock Exchange top 20 index listed firms as restating the previously published financial reports and providing poor disclosure about the restatement. The study used cumulative abnormal return to analyze the market response towards the restatements. And further we produced restatement disclosure index method to evaluate the informativeness of financial statements and to evaluate how supportive are the disclosures of financial statements in forming a decision by the financial statement users. It was not surprising that our results revealed that capital market does not react towards the restatement. The analysis was further supported by the finding that financial statements are not providing sufficient information through disclosures. The poor financial reporting practice was not varied by whether state ownership is participated or not. Also the frequency of restatements is not reducing over the analysis period. The result indicates low accounting credibility in Mongolia and those poor quality financial reports do not bear a cost.

This monograph is one of the few books to investigate the understudied but fascinating topic of accounting restatement in the European context. In the first chapter, substantial changes over time in treatments for correction of errors under the International Financial Reporting Standards and Italian generally accepted accounting principles are examined. Following that, a brief overview of the literature, mainly concerning the United States environment, and characteristics of and trends in accounting issues drawn from restatements announced by a sample of firms listed in European countries from 2016 to 2020 are presented. After a review of multi-country empirical research, chapter 3 presents an assessment of the frequency and severity of restatements at the country, industry and year levels. Finally, chapter 4 considers the forewarning effect of topics communicated in the key audit matters in relation to subsequently revealed account-specific misstatements by proposing a new matching procedure. Throughout the work, the author provides frequent comparisons with findings obtained by United States scholars.

This book is motivated by the long-lasting, although still recent, discussion on how to ensure that accounting numbers, while supported by auditors’ favourable opinions, are definitely reliable and eliminate any suspicion that accounting reports could be affected by opportunism, which is documented by the discovery of frequent accounting mistakes. The book analyses and discusses restatements from both the theoretical and the practical perspective, considering the complex environment in which they may occur and focusing particularly on accounting restatements that have affected European corporations for over a decade since the mandatory adoption of the International Financial Reporting Standards.

In 2002, it was reported that the number of restatement announcements due to financial reporting fraud &/or accounting errors grew significantly between Jan. 1997 & June 2002, negatively impacting the restating companies¿ market capitalization by billions of dollars. The author was asked to update key aspects of the 2002 report. This report discusses: (1) the number of, reasons for, & other trends in restatements; (2) the impact of restatement announcements on the restating companies¿ stock costs & what is known about investors¿ confidence in U.S. capital markets; & (3) regulatory enforcement actions involving accounting- & audit-related issues. Includes recommendations. Charts & tables.