Title: Earnings Magic and the Unbalance Sheet: The Search for Financial Reality / Edition 1
Author: Gary Giroux
ISBN-10: 0471768553
ISBN-13: 9780471768555
How can an investor protect his or her stock portfolio? How can ananalyst make accurate projections on a company’s financial health? Earnings Magic and the Unbalance Sheet: The Search for FinancialReality guides business professionals including corporate financialanalysts, practicing accountants, credit analysts, institutionaland individual investors, money managers, and commercial banklenders through the maze of potentially misleading earnings andaccounting disclosures to search for financial reality. With keen insight and state-of-the-art analytical tools,Earnings Magic and the Unbalance Sheet deftly guides the wiseinvestor or analyst on how to best assess corporate financialstatus and make better financial decisions by recognizing companieswith poor and deceptive disclosure practices. This eye-opening bookarms the reader with an earnings magic detection strategy thatreveals how—and why—corporations “fudge” their numbersand explores the factors that point to potentially lowearnings. Author Gary Giroux pulls back the curtain to show how bigcompanies—even in the shadow of changes since the Enron andWorldCom financial fiascos and congressional hearings leading tothe Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002—still use dubious financialmaneuvers to manipulate the bottom line and overstate revenue. Forthe investor who wants to avoid financial losses—and whichinvestor doesn’t?—this is required reading on the best way toresearch and read financial reports. Earnings Magic and theUnbalance Sheet: The Search for Financial Reality shows you howto: Establish a basic overview strategy Thoroughly review the firm’s prevailing financialenvironment Know the background essential for in-depth analysis includingcorporate governance, the regulatory environment, the toolsavailable for analysis, and the incentives of major players Make the most of sources of financial data including acompany’s annual and quarterly reports and proxy statement Access public information on companies via a wealth of Internettools Financial deceptions, such as inflated revenues and hiddenexpenses that are difficult to detect, still takes place incorporations despite new regulations designed to make financialinformation more reliable and oversight more extensive. EarningsMagic and the Unbalance Sheet equips readers to identify the earlywarning signs of a company’s problems, determine its financialtransparency, and estimate its financial reality.