The Financial Numbers Game: Detecting Creative Accounting Practices

Mulford, Charles W.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0471770736 ISBN 13: 9780471770732

Publisher: Wiley, 2005

Praise for "The Financial Numbers Game": 'So much for the notion 'those who can, do-those who can't, teach'. Mulford and Comiskey function successfully both as college professors and real-world financial mercenaries. These guys know their balance sheets. The Financial Numbers Game should serve as a survival manual for both serious individual investors and industry pros who study and act upon the interpretation of financial statements. This unique blend of battle-earned scholarship and quality writing is a must-read/must-have reference for serious financial statement analysis' - Bob Acker, Editor/Publisher, "The Acker Letter". 'Wall Street's unforgiving attention to quarterly earnings presents ever-increasing pressure on CFOs to manage earnings and expectations. "The Financial Numbers Game" provides a clear explanation of the ways in which management can stretch, bend, and break accounting rules to reach the desired bottom line. This arms the serious investor or financial analyst with the healthy skepticism required to drive beyond reported results to a clear understanding of a firm's true performance' - Mark Hurley, Managing Director, Training and Development Global Corporate and Investment Banking, Bank of America. 'After reading "The Financial Numbers Game", I feel as though I've taken a master's course in financial statement analysis. Mulford and Comiskey's latest book should be required reading for anyone who is serious about fundamentally analyzing stocks' - Harry Domash, Investing Columnist, "San Francisco Chronicle" and Publisher, "Winning Investing". "The Financial Numbers Game" identifies the steps businesses may take to misstate financial performance and helps its readers to identify those situations where reported results may not be what they seem.

Review:

"The author's purpose is "to equip the financial statement reader to better detect the use of creative accounting practices and avoid the equity-investment and credit-granting mistakes." A book for it's time" ("Strategic Finance," March 2002)

"With the collapse of Enron Corp., the January debut of the "Financial Numbers Game" could not have arrived at a more perfect time. The book focuses on educating investors on how to spot "creative accounting Practices." Co-Author Charles W. Mulford outlines a few basic guidelines for detecting-and preventing-creative accounting." ("SmartPros/Accounting News and Insights," March 2002)

About the Author:

Charles W. Mulford is the Invesco Chair and Professor of Accounting and Eugene E. Comiskey is the Callaway Chair and Professor of Accounting in the DuPree College of Management at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta. Both professors have doctorates in accounting and are professionally qualified as certified public accountants. In addition to their work at Georgia Tech, they actively consult with lenders at commercial banks in the United States and abroad. Professors Mulford and Comiskey have published articles on financial reporting and analysis issues in leading academic journals in the accounting and finance fields as well as in such widely read professional journals as the Commercial Lending Review and the Financial Analysts' Journal. This is the authors' third book. Their first, Financial Warnings, published in 1996, identifies the warning signs of future corporate earnings difficulties. Their second, Guide to Financial Reporting and Analysis, seeks to simplify the complexities of current-day generally accepted accounting principles as an aid to practicing financial analysts and other users of financial statements.