乐购危机之财务危机.pdfVIP

乐购危机之财务危机 Booking revenues, like comedy, is all about timing 预估收益和喜剧一样，把握时机很重要 Sep 27th 2014 | From the print edition IT IS too soon to say whether the accounting misstatement at Tesco was cock-up o conspiracy. The source of the discrepancy is already clear, however, and it is as old as book-keeping itself: the premature recognition of revenue. 乐购财务造假是偶然还是蓄意目前还言之尚早。然而这种差异的来源 已经很清楚了，它发生在记账阶段：过早地确认了收入。 Suppliers make payments to supermarkets that meet certain sales targets fo thei products, run promotions o place the goods in eye-catching places, such as at the end of aisles. Tesco managers appea to have been too ambitious in forecasting these “rebates”. They may also have unde eported the costs of stolen and out-of-date produce. 若超市达到一定的产品销售目标，举办促销活动，或是将货物摆放在 醒目之处，比如超市过道的两端，供应商会支付给超市一定的费用。 乐购的管理层似乎过于高估了这些“回扣” 的价值，当然他们也可能是 低估了被盗物品和过期物品的成本。 In a study of accounting scandals at American companies by the Committee of Sponsoring Organisations, a business-ethics body, the misrecording of revenues was to blame in 60% of cases. Manipulation generally falls into one of two categories. In the first, involving “timing differences”, the revenue is genuine but, say, sales at the start of a quarter are booked as having been struc in the previous one. The flipside of this is “cookie jar accounting: pushing today’s revenue into tomorrow so it can be dipped into to shore up weak quarters. 据企业伦理机构发起人委员会的研究称，美国公司60%的会计丑闻要 归结于谎报收益。操纵行为一般可分为两类。第一种情况涉及到“时 差 ，收益是真实的，但是季度初始的销售额被列入上一个季度入账。 与之相对的是“饼干罐 记账：将当前收益推至将来，以此推高疲软季 度的销售额。 In the second, more serious category, the sales are fake: often, a related party poses as a customer to generate phoney invoices. Examples include Gowex, a Spanish technology firm that folded earlier this year, and Satyam Computer of India, whose boss compared the escalation of the $1.5 billion