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CA's Ex-CEO Indicted on Fraud
An anonymous reader writes "CNN is carrying a story about how Sanjay Kumar, ex-CEO of Computer Associates, was indicted on fraud charges. Prosecutors said the long-running accounting fraud scheme featured what came to be known by Computer Associates employees as a "35-day month" because company books were routinely kept open until revenues exceeded projected goals. "The defendants cooked the books by simply keeping them open beyond the end of a fiscal quarter for however long it took to meet the analysts earning estimates," said Deputy Attorney General James Comey. Comey said by the time the "house of cards" collapsed, about $2.2 Billion in revenue was booked prematurely. Good thing CA settled it's case with the DOJ."
Another Enron/Worldcom like problem... shoot all the CEOs and the IT industry will prosper.
I'm the root of all that's evil, yeah, but you can call me cookie.
This better not have a negative impact
on eTrust Antivirus.
It's a lot more dependable and a lot less bloated than both Norton Antivirus and McAffee.
Whatever happened to the old days of being ethical and honest with regard to your responsibilities to the consumer.
Those days never existed, as long as businesses are run by people, there will be greed driven corruption. There was widespread corruption in the tea industry during the 17th & 18th century (corporations had actually become powerful to the point where they had their own army), railroads (robber barons) in the 19th century, banking (savings & loans) in the 20th century, just to name a few.
Corporations also have no responsibilities to the consumer, they are responsible to their stockholders. The industry has matured, it's more in control of the business types looking to use technology for profit, than the passionate hackers.
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"CA settled it's case with the DOJ."
It should be its, not it's.
Since we had a recent article from the CGL at the Univeristy of Waterloo, here's the explanation from one of the faculty there.
Yes, I'm pedantic.
/<en
Sure. There are plenty. And they're privately-held. The stock market boom of the 1990's made getting that IPO done job number one for up-and-coming business-types. It really started to spin out-of-control with Netscape.
But there are those of us who own IT businesses, who steadfastly refuse to live by the rules the stock market demands. I will gladly trade high profit for product quality, employee satisfaction, and customer support. But Wall Street would have none of that.
That's why it's called investing and not "making free money." Dividends are great, but most people invest more for the capital gain (increase in share price). It's not a scam, it's purchasing something that you believe will become more valuable in the future.
Hoping that some greater fool will come along and buy your stock at a higher price is not investing, it's speculation.
Sure, if you legitimately believe someone will come along later and buy your stock at a greater price than you paid, then okay. But remember the purchaser has the same idea as you. At some point there are no greater fools left. Who is going to buy the stock at an even greater price? Someone is left holding the bag.
A soap-box has nothing to do with washing. To stand on ones soap box is to express ones opinions loudly.
Actually, no.
Enron "invested" in a power project with some rather underhand dealings and the next government to take power put the project on hold.
So Enron just couldn't get the returns they expected (they didn't get any).
This has absolutely nothing to do with their IT division.
I can throw myself at the ground, and miss.
In large-company financial reporting, there are some areas in which some interpretation is permitted/required; bookings/billings/backlogs and depreciation are two such areas often (ab)used by CFOs and controllers to "fine-tune" closing numbers so that earnings are just above or in line with analysts expectations. If a company is going to such extremes as closing books late (here) or inventing bogus companies (such as with Enron) to generate the requisite numbers, however, then something must *really* be wrong at the company and that seems like "crossing that line" to me. There oughta be some penalties somewhere so everybody knows that this behavior is not right or even profitable. Hopefully, the existing CA shareholders won't get hurt too much from this and perhaps shareholders will inspire a new management to move in different directions; the cynical side in me says that those shareholders are often too ill-informed to understand or change management's behavior.
Too lazy to create a sig...