Dear ACCT004 class,
From the YouTube videos of the singers’ performance (English translation of the meaningful lyrics below), we can all feel their Dedication and Attitude towards Singing.. they found their own Voice that touches the heart of the people around them and I hope all of us will too, in our own Way.. As you develop and acquire your own Voice and the Mastery of your skills, I will be anxious, available and cheering for you!
Warm regards,
KB
http://www.fraud-magazine.com/article.aspx?id=415
Posted by Amy CHAN Wen Yi, Year 4 undergrad at the School of Accountancy, Singapore Management University
Takafumi Horie had no use for conventional Japanese business practices. This 30-something, self-proclaimed Web entrepreneur geek donned black T-shirts and jeans while most businessmen still wore the standard-issue gray suits.1 He flaunted the millions he amassed from his Livedoor Co. Ltd., an Internet service provider, and the companies he bought. He drove a Ferrari, lived in one of Tokyo’s flashiest apartment complexes, and bragged about his success on television – a Japanese taboo where modesty is prized. Continue reading
http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/01/15/us-nyag-interview-schneiderman-idUSKBN0KO2JE20150115
Posted by Latha Do NADARAJAN, Year 3 undergrad at the School of Accountancy, Singapore Management University
New York’s top law enforcement official said he plans to help bring more fraud cases against the world’s biggest banks for selling shoddy mortgage-backed securities before the 2008 financial crisis. Continue reading
Credit Suisse Sues REI Agro in Singapore Over Alleged Loan Fraud
By Andrea Tan – Jan 19, 2015
Credit Suisse Group AG (CSGN) sued REI Agro Ltd. (REIA) in Singapore claiming the Indian basmati rice producer and 16 related companies conspired to get loans for non-existent trades of the staple. REI Agro founders Sandip and Sanjay Jhunjhunwala used a web of sham rice-trading companies in Singapore and Hong Kong to support a 2012 $115.5 million loan agreement by REI Agro’s Dubai-based Ammalay Commoditiess JLT, according to a lawsuit in the Singapore High Court. Continue reading
http://www.wsj.com/articles/weavering-hedge-fund-founder-found-guilty-of-fraud-1421697445
Weavering Hedge Fund Founder Found Guilty of Fraud: Jury Finds Swedish Financier Guilty on 8 Counts
LAURENCE FLETCHER
Jan. 19, 2015 2:57 p.m. ET
The conviction of hedge fund manager Magnus Peterson on Monday marks a winning end to a long-running probe by the U.K.’s Serious Fraud Office. In the U.K.’s first prominent hedge fund manager conviction since the credit crisis, a jury found the Swedish financier who ran Weavering Macro Fund guilty on eight counts of fraud, forgery, false accounting and fraudulent trading. Continue reading
Does Religion Mitigate Tunneling? Evidence from Chinese Buddhism
Du, Xingqiang1 xqdu@xmu.edu.cn
Journal of Business Ethics. Dec2014, Vol. 125 Issue 2, p299-327. 29p. 14 Charts, 1 Map.
Abstract:
In the Chinese stock market, controlling shareholders often use inter-corporate loans to expropriate a great amount of cash from listed firms, through a process called ‘tunneling.’ Using a sample of 10,170 firm-year observations from the Chinese stock market for the period of 2001-2010, I examine whether and how Buddhism, China’s most influential religion, can mitigate tunneling. In particular, using firm-level Buddhism data, measured as the number of Buddhist monasteries within a certain radius around Chinese listed firms’ registered addresses, this study provides strong evidence that Buddhism intensity is significantly negatively associated with tunneling. This finding is consistent with the view that Buddhism has important influence on corporate behavior and can serve as a set of social norms and/or an alternative mechanism to mitigate controlling shareholders’ unethical tunneling behavior. In addition, my findings also reveal that the negative association between Buddhism intensity and tunneling is attenuated for firms that have high analyst coverage. The results are robust to various measures of Buddhism intensity and a variety of sensitivity tests.
http://www.thefinancialexpress-bd.com/2015/01/19/76604
Ownership structure in local cos needs to be balanced
FE Report
19 January 2015
The Financial Express (Bangladesh)
Bangladesh, Jan. 19 — Ownership structure in the local companies needs to be balanced for limiting the domination of family stakes in order to help check the alleged practices of manipulating their operational and financial activities through Real Earnings Management (REM), a researcher said.
Referring findings of a study report on such an issue in Japan, an expert came up with the observation at an international conference on “Accounting for Capital Governance” Sunday. Dr Mohammed Mehadi Masud Mazumder, assistant professor of the Department of Accounting and Information Systems (AIS), Dhaka University, presented the study on “Real Activity-based Earnings Management in Japan: Examining the Roles of Sophisticated Investors” at a session of the conference. Continue reading
http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/01/19/hp-autonomy-sfo-idUSL6N0UY26N20150119
UK’s Serious Fraud Office ends investigation into HP-Autonomy deal
10:03am EST
* UK’s SFO ends its investigation into deal to buy Autonomy
* SFO cedes jurisdiction of parts of case to U.S. authorities (Adds HP, former Autonomy CEO Lynch reaction)
By Paul Sandle
LONDON, Jan 19 (Reuters) – Britain’s Serious Fraud Office (SFO) has closed its investigation into the ill-fated sale of Autonomy to Hewlett-Packard Co in 2011, saying there was not enough evidence to secure a conviction of the software firm’s former executives. Autonomy was supposed to be the $11.1 billion centrepiece of a shift into software for HP, but the deal turned sour a year later when it wrote off three quarters of the company’s value.
HP alleged “some former members of Autonomy’s management team used accounting improprieties, misrepresentations and disclosure failures” to inflate the company’s apparent worth by more than $5 billion. Autonomy’s former management, including company founder Mike Lynch, has denied the allegations. Continue reading
Posted by CHEN TianCheng, Year 4 undergrad at the School of Accountancy, Singapore Management University
What I found relevant were the ways that short-sellers could manipulate the market and make quick money out of it (in many cases, this would be the minority investors). My purpose for sharing this is to bring up the point that unlike us thinking that the perpetrators of frauds are the only bad guys, short-sellers can also do ethically questionable actions given the amount of funds they have on hand.
Posted by CHEN TianCheng, Year 4 undergrad at the School of Accountancy, Singapore Management University
Prior to reading this, I was not aware that in India, there was a different expectation towards external auditors compared to in Singapore, that the external auditors have the onus to detect fraud in their performance of the statutory audit. This is significantly different in Singapore, where our purpose is not to uncover fraud, but to ensure no material misstatements are uncorrected, that can change an intended user’s decision.
This difference is illustrated here in the amendments to the India Company’s Act in 2013.
I also found a PwC’s special report on MCX in India which unveiled 676 related parties other than the 235 that were already disclosed. This discrepancy was unveiled only after decades.
Experts are still questioning the role of auditors in India, whether it is their responsibility to detect fraud, and they bring up valid problems that external auditors face in the performance of audit procedures. If they are required to uncover fraud, it would probably mean that they need to check every transaction and not do the usual sampling processes that is usually performed to ensure no material misstatements.
AsianExtractor: Unearthing Accounting Fraud in Asia 