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Deep Dive into the General Electric-Markopolos Case – Here: The Baker Hughes Accounting
On 15 August 2019, General Electric (GE) has been hit by a research report written by former Bernie-Madoff-whistleblower Harry Markopolos which claimed that GE hides roughly 38 bn USD of accounting…
Are News on CEO-blames-it-to-Employees a good trigger for building up a Short Position?
It is summertime, not too busy, and hence a good opportunity to have a look at some topics which are rather not at the core of the daily work of an equity investor. So it was a nice coincidence that…
How Renault manages its Accounting R&D-Treatment – The Asset/Expense Financial Analysis Problem
On 26 July 2019 Renault S.A. published its half-year figures. Many investors and analysts were surprised by the relatively high operating earnings of the company (ca. 4% above I/B/E/S consensus…
How IFF will build-up a huge Accounting ORIGINAL Goodwill – The Umbrella-Category Financial Analysis Problem
The IASB and the FASB have one important red line when it comes to intangibles accounting: With a couple of clearly defined exceptions (e.g. for IFRS following the criteria of IAS 38.45) it is…
Judging Steinhoff by Benford’s Law (and its big limits!!) – The Digits-Frequency Financial Analysis Problem
In my recent articles on financial analysis (see https://valuesque.com/aktuelles/) I mainly focussed on some fundamental analyses that should show whether companies stretched the discretion that…
How to sell the same product several times? – The Customer-as-a-Partner Financial Analysis Problem (1)
What can companies do if the end-customer market is simply too small for their ambitious revenue goals? They can simply create a new parallel-market. Sounds impossible? It is not! And it has…
Can Tongaat turn Sugar into Gold? The IAS 41 Biological Assets Financial Analysis Problem
While Tongaat Hulett LTD was standing close to the top of our accounting watch-list for a long time (and we were scratching our heads about a lot of things), recent developments led us to give an…
Joint DRSC and IFRS Foundation Event: ‘Relevance of financial reporting in today’s global environment’
In the beautiful BMW Group Classic location in Munich the Accounting Standards Committee of Germany (Deutsches Rechnungslegungs Standards Committee, DRSC) and the International Financial Reporting…
Earn-Outs as Hidden Personnel Expenses – The M&A-Camouflage Financial Analysis Problem
M&A accounting is certainly one of the trickiest playing fields in accounting for a couple of reasons: 1) It is aperiodic and therefore breaks into our normal and familiar accounting often like…
KBC’s and KBC Ancora’s Relative Pricing – Lessons learned for Distressed Equity Valuation
On 13 and 14 June 2019, the IVSC-WAVO Global Valuation Conference 2019 took place in Frankfurt in front of a truly international audience with valuation experts from all over the world – a very…