Lifting the Lid: U.S. Companies Hide Bad News Deep in Releases

[Rose Siding]

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Burying bad news is back with a vengeance.

Investors may have thought the days when companies hid massive net losses, focused on some kind of weird adjusted measure of earnings and talked mumbo jumbo about their prospects died out with the dot-com bust. But a glance through some of the reports coming through in the past week shows that just isn't the case.

Take Clear Channel Communications Inc. (CCU.N: Quote, Profile, Research) , for example. You won't find any mention of its quarterly net loss of $4.67 billion until page 9 of the earnings statement. The company's quarterly results, reported on Friday, were hit with a $4.9 billion write-down -- and that wasn't deemed important enough to mention until page 7.
...
This, of course, was all supposed to end when the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in January 2003 issued rules that required more clarity in corporate earnings results. The new rules were a response to reporting abuses in the 1990s, especially among technology and telecommunications companies that ignored normal business costs as a way of padding their bottom lines.

......More......

http://reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=7747167

[truthisfreedom]

1. corrected link

http://reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=7747167

it seems they're trying to bury this story as well.

[Rose Siding]

2. thanks

I mess up Reuters' links somehow.

[Igel]

3. They didn't mis-state earnings or revenues, I don't think.

"The company centers attention on its adjusted earnings of 19 cents a share, emphasizing that the other figure was mainly the result of a mere noncash goodwill impairment charge."

"Goodwill" is a non-tangible asset; like any asset, it has value and usually winds up in the balance sheet. Like any asset, it can depreciate. It depreciated. It reduced their assets, but doesn't directly effect income or debt payments.

If there's any malfeasance or wrongdoing, it was overstating the value of their "goodwill". I've never, never understood how they figure out what "goodwill" is worth.

[Spinzonner]

4. They don't either

They just make it up as they need it.

[Igel]

5. That's what I always suspected.

If it looks like your debts outweigh your assets ... balance the books with a dollop o' "goodwill."

[lovuian]

6. Corporations like Enron who support the Bush regime go

Bankrupt eventually!!!

[Dover]

9. Maybe these company's were created with planned obsolescence

in mind.
I've often wondered if they weren't created just to accumulate funds
which would be shuffled off into foreign bank accounts. After defrauding millions they simply get a slap on the wrist, maybe a fine and then go collect their billions in offshore assets...
They also helped fund the Bush campaign and bought favors.

Were they ever meant to survive beyond their intended purpose?

[w4rma]

7. The corporate news is acting in exactly the same way with respect

to anything that might lower "stocks" for the Republican Party. Bad news for Repugs gets buried on "page 9" in exactly the same manner.

And just like these corporations, America will fall farther into "bankruptcy" the longer this continues.

[Supersedeas]

10. what's sexy about Conservative Crooks--they're a dime a dozen

[Rex]

8. Media whores!

Power of the Press!

[dbt]

11. Kick