First published in 1992. Prior to this work no thorough study had been made of the Dutch institutional environment and of the Dutch practice of regulating the process of financial accounting despite a number of unique and influential practices originating there. The book attempts to trace the conditions, the sources and the connections of the regulatory processes for financial statements — providing orientation for readers unfamiliar with the Dutch context and a chronological survey from the 19th century to the early 1990’s. In addition to analysing the Dutch process, comparison is made with the standard-setting processes in the United States and UK. The title will be of interest to students of Business and Economics.

Effective corporate reporting and disclosure are critical in financial markets to promote vigorous competition, optimal performance, and transparency. This book examines whether existing disclosure frameworks in eight countries with the world's most significant securities exchanges achieve these objectives, and then, drawing on extensive empirical findings, identifies the policies and practices that contribute most to improving the overall quality of listed company reporting and communication. Contending that public disclosure of listed company information is an essential precondition to the long-term efficient operation of financial markets, the book provides analysis of such issues and topics as the following: - arguments for and against mandatory disclosure regimes; - key principles of periodic and continuous disclosure regulation; - tensions between direct and indirect investment in financial markets; - assumptions concerning the need to maintain a privileged role for financial intermediaries; - intermediary, analyst, and research incentives; - protection of individual investors; - selective disclosure; - disclosure of bad news; - the role of accounting standards; - public access to company briefings; - long term performance reporting and analysis; and - company reporting developments. A significant portion of the book provides an overview of disclosure regulation and practice in the United States, Canada, Germany, the United Kingdom, Japan, Hong Kong, Australia, and Singapore. A highly informative survey looks at company reports, disclosures, and websites of large listed companies, including Microsoft, Citigroup, Teck Resources, Deutsche Bank, BP, Sony, PetroChina Company, BHP Billiton, and Singapore Telecommunications. The book discusses common disclosure issues that arise across jurisdictions, provides valuable insights on the efficacy of existing disclosure regulation and practice, and highlights the important principles, processes, and practices that underpin best practice company disclosure frameworks. It will be welcomed by company boards and executives and their counsel, as well as by policymakers and scholars in the areas of corporate, securities, banking and financial law, accounting, economics and finance.

This collection of memorial articles and selected obituaries highlights the careers and contributions to accounting practice, the accounting profession, and the accounting literature of leading American figures in the 20th century. The memorial articles do much more than recite their subject’s career. More importantly, they discuss and assess their subject’s role in influencing the course of accounting practice and the profession as well as the evolution of their influential writings, revealing the names of the accounting leaders and leading thinkers of the past century. Memorial Articles for 20th Century American Accounting Leaders is useful in providing students and young researchers with a rich source of intelligence on the leaders who have established norms of practice, advanced the profession, and set the terms of debate in the literature – leaders who are cited and even quoted but who are known mostly as names without a full-bodied treatment of their backgrounds and broader roles in shaping the accounting literature.

Public companies now face constant pressure to meet investor expectations. A company must continually deliver strong short-term performance every quarter to maintain its stock price. This valuation treadmill creates incentives for corporations to deceive investors. Published more than twenty years after the passage of Sarbanes-Oxley, which requires all public companies to invest in measures to ensure the accuracy of their disclosures, The Valuation Treadmill shows how securities fraud became a major regulatory concern. Drawing on case studies of paradigmatic securities enforcement actions involving Xerox, Penn Central, Apple, Enron, Citigroup, and General Electric, the book argues that corporate securities fraud emerged as investors increasingly valued companies based on their future performance. Corporations now have an incentive to issue unrealistically optimistic disclosure to convince markets that their success will continue. Securities regulation must do more to protect the integrity of public companies from the pressure of the valuation treadmill.

First Published in 1981. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.