http://www.thestar.com.my/Business/Business-News/2015/05/15/SC-imposes-sanctions-on-YFG/?style=biz
SC imposes sanctions on YFG
Friday, 15 May 2015
PETALING JAYA: YFG Bhd has been slapped with sanctions by the Securities Commission (SC) for knowingly authorising the furnishing of false statements on Nov 5, 2014 in its amended audited financial statements to Bursa Malaysia. Continue reading
Toshiba puts downward profit revision at over ¥50 billion
KYODO, BLOOMBERG
MAY 14, 2015
Toshiba Corp. has announced it might have to revise operating profit downward by just over ¥50 billion ($412 million) for the three years through March 2014 because of an in-house investigation into improper accounting at its infrastructure-related businesses. Continue reading
http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-05-14/corporate-japan-answers-to-nobody
Corporate Japan Answers to Nobody
MAY 14, 2015 6:00 PM EDT
It’s been a dreadful week for Japanese corporations. Toshiba is facing questions about its accounting practices, Sharp is asking lenders for another bailout and Takata can’t escape bad news about its airbags. Continue reading
Don’t write off write-offs: Bad news often reflects past overoptimism
May 16th 2015
WHEN big companies announce write-offs, they tend not to do things by halves. Back in 2008 AIG, an insurance group rescued by the American government, reported an annual loss of $99 billion, with almost $62 billion of that occurring in a single quarter. In 2001 JDS Uniphase, an optical-equipment maker, chalked up a deficit of $56 billion.
Such losses are so big they can seem almost unreal. That can serve a dual purpose. First, the deficit can be dismissed as the product of “mere accounting”, the result of pedantic number-crunching. Assets have been written down in value, but that is not the same as a cash loss. Second, when new managers are appointed, a huge loss can be blamed on the previous regime. All the bad news can be revealed at once, a phenomenon known as “kitchen-sinking”. From that point on, the only direction for profits must be up. Continue reading
FT Alphaville | May 14 07:18 | 1 comment | Share
By Jennifer Hughes in Hong Kong
Seven weeks of silence. That’s what investors in Tianhe Chemicals have had since the short target said it needed to give its auditors more information and would delay publishing its 2014 results. Thursday marks exactly seven weeks since it made the announcement and suspended its shares at the same time, highlighting one of the less fun aspects of the Hong Kong market – the risk of getting trapped.
A recap:The Chinese speciality chemicals group became a Hong Kong market darling after it listed last June, gaining more than a third between the float and the moment it was attacked by Anonymous Analytics just over two months later. The now standard attack- denial-more attack-lengthy rebuttal process followed. Tianhe vigorously rejected AA’s claims that it had generated a fraction of the sales and profits it had reported. Continue reading
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-05-14/wesley-clark-penny-stock-general
Wesley Clark: The Penny-Stock General
The retired four-star general lends his name to some sketchy companies
May 14, 2015
Sixteen years ago, Wesley Clark was the four-star U.S. Army general running the Kosovo war. These days, he’s been pitching food-truck franchises to military veterans and helping a convicted felon raise money to grow hydroponic lettuce. “We’d love it if you joined with us in an investment,” the silver-haired Clark, 70, says in a promotional video for a company called the Grilled Cheese Truck. He’s pictured standing in front of a statue of a bald eagle in a replica of the Oval Office. “We’re going to be one of the fastest-growing young companies in America.”
The grilled cheese venture is losing money and hasn’t signed any veterans as franchisees, and the lettuce operation is being sued for failing to pay its bills. They’re just two of a dozen precarious ventures with which Clark has been associated since he retired from the Army with the self-proclaimed goal—a joke, he says now—of making $40 million.
Clark is one of many former governors, generals, and congressmen who’ve found second careers lending their name to tiny companies that are willing to pay for prestige. Since he ran for president in 2004, Clark has joined the boards of at least 18 public companies, 10 of them penny-stock outfits, whose shares trade in the “over the counter” markets, a corner of Wall Street where fraud and manipulation are common. Continue reading
AsianExtractor: Unearthing Accounting Fraud in Asia 