Illustrations of departures from the auditor\u27s standard report : a survey of the application of statement on auditing standards no. 2; Financial report survey, 07

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An analysis of the quality of environmental disclosures in the annual financial statements of selected South African companies and a suggested environmental reporting model

Includes bibliographies and references.Environmental damage has become of widespread concern, so much so that some companies are disclosing environmental information in their annual reports, the traditional medium for communication to shareholders and other users. There is no recognised reporting model or framework for the reporting of environmental information. As a result, these disclosures are often ad hoc, and objective determination of their quality is extremely difficult. Furthermore, to the writer's knowledge, no survey of environmental disclosures has been conducted in South Africa. The objectives of this dissertation included the determination of an appropriate environmental reporting model, based on the critical review of the accounting legal and economic literatures. The reporting model suggested is that of compliance with legal environmental standards, with certain additional financial information. An existing disclosure index, enabling the objective measurement of environmental disclosure quality, was extended and adapted to the South African situation. Analysis of the index scores revealed an improvement in the quality of environmental disclosures over a five year period, and that disclosures are not influenced by a company's total assets or the presence of international shareholders. Analysis of index scores on a group basis revealed that disclosures are not made as a result of a top-down approach. However, companies in similar industries in a group tended to have almost identical disclosures. Comparison of the results of the South African survey with a similar American one, revealed a significant disparity between disclosure scores for the oil, paper and steel industries. This disparity is exacerbated by the difference in time period of at least 15 years, and suggests that the difference in disclosure quality is possibly as a result of the disparity in content and enforcement of legal environmental standards. With the opening up of international markets to South African business, producers may no longer be able to ignore international environmental standards, and the poor quality of South African disclosures may well prove unacceptable. Without more effective legal environmental standards, there will be little progress towards improved environmental disclosures

An Analysis of Speculative Language in SEC 10-K Filings

This study applies sentiment analysis techniques to model the usage of speculation within a collection of financial documents. The model is trained on the MPQA corpus to extract features that correlate with speculative sentences and applied to a collection of SEC 10-K documents from a five year period. The documents with the highest amount of speculation contained a different concentration of terms compared to the entire collection, and the sentences mostly consisted of explaining potential risks concerning projects, taxes, and pensions.Master of Science in Information Scienc

When the financial statements are definitive. The Italian case.

In this article, the question arises as to when a balance sheet can be defined as definitive is certain. Undoubtedly, observance of the postulates of truthfulness, fairness and clarity is the first step toward drawing up a legitimate and legally valid balance sheet. This, however, does not guarantee that the financial statements are certain and definitive because, at any time, a shareholder or third party may challenge the financial statements drawn up even though they observe the postulates of clarity, truthfulness and correctness. The balance sheet will become final and inevitable when no one can challenge the resolution approving that document. This article will highlight the evolution that has taken place in Italy concerning this issue

Updated illustrations of departures from the auditor\u27s standard report : a survey of the application of statement on auditing standards no. 2 as amended; Financial report survey, 29

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Cybernetic thinking and share-price prediction

This thesis was submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy and awarded by Brunel University.The thesis presents the application of cybernetic thinking to the central problem of investment analysis; that of share-price prediction. Cybernetics is seen as an inter-disciplinary study (as opposed to multi-disciplinary) in which the barriers between living and non-living systems are ignored. Suggestions from two independant studies in investment analysis are taken tip and a theory of investment is proposed with a view to utilising the suggestions. The theory is formalised using the simple linear perceptron and methods based on logical calculi are used to analyse the perceptron formulation. The theory is then tested by allowing the perceptron to make predictions and the results of these predictions are discussed in the light of the theoretical analysis. Finally suggestions are made for alternative approaches to investment analysis which could lead to better results