Preview

World Com

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
649 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
World Com
In the case of WorldCom, a national company that began in 1983 and would provide long-distance telephone services, it is hard to determine where the problem begins. The case, as explained in the book, has never really found the core of the problem. We are told that financial reports were falsely created and improper accounting practices were found, but who is to blame? The textbook tells us that several of the former top financial executives pleaded guilty to securities fraud, however they defended themselves to say that they were forced to cover things up by other top officials. As reading through the questions given in class it was hard to completely gather all thoughts into one area. We know that World Com is a for profit organization that provided telecommunications to …show more content…
In the end, through the filing of bankruptcy and all of the other legal issues, it also affected the employees through layoffs and such. However, the investors were the ones who lost their money invested into the company. The investors were the primary Stakeholders affected through this issue as well. The stakeholder issues involved the investors as though they were investing into the purchase of stock for the company while there were internal audits going on throughout the company. While the audits were going on, no one outside of the company knew what was going on. I think the main business ethical issue in the Worldcom case was the false reports and the idea that issues were held "secret" from the investors. It is morally wrong to withhold information from someone, especially someone who is investing so much money into something. Therefore the ethical issue that business decision makers lacked in this case what outright honesty and fairness. The decision makers had a responsibility to legally report accurate financial information and economically want to maximize the company's

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    WorldCom was one of the leading telecommunication companies prior to its application for bankruptcy protection on July 21st, 2002. The firm’s decision to file for bankruptcy was a shocker move considering the amount of revenues and asset base the company had. It is believed that the firm was highly involved in fraudulent bookkeeping between the year 1999 and 2000 where they had managed to overstate its taxable income by at least $7 billion. It was also revealed that the company had committed itself to maintaining an earning to expense ratio which was relatively high. Therefore, the firm had a self-imposed high target which became relatively difficult to achieve over time owing to shrinking revenues. In the early years of the 1990s, the firm…

    • 945 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Week 2 Eth 376

    • 293 Words
    • 2 Pages

    WorldCom was the second largest telecommunications corporation in the United States. After thriving in a multi-million dollar business they were forced to close their doors. The reason were practices unethical and fraudulent activities which lead to exposing the business. WorldCom was one of the largest accounting fraud scandals in corporate history. WorldCom had to file for bankruptcy after the organization admitted to accounting fraud. How this came up was a long and drawn out investigation. In the financial statements determined that the auditor was right about that the corporation was making false transactions that could not be determined what or how they go the amounts from. From the investigation that the auditors discovered $11 billion dollars that was fraudulent transactions.…

    • 293 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Better Essays

    WorldCom was one of the largest telecom companies in the world during 1996 to 2002. The company helped to grow a small regional company that bought and re-sold long distance in the South into an international behemoth that operated in over 65 countries. However, in 2002, the senior management and employees perpetrated a massive fraud, and in June, WorldCom announced that it had “misstated” its financial statements over the last five quarters by $3.8 billion. After coming out this scandal, WorldCom went bankrupt…

    • 1104 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    Case

    • 397 Words
    • 2 Pages

    If WorldCom would have created a working culture full of honesty, positive work environment, openness, and assistance there would have never been any fraud. Instead they created an aggressive, individualistic, and competitive culture. Efforts that were made to establish a corporate Code of Conduct received Ebbers disapproval; he described the Code as a “colossal waste of time”. The consistent pressure from management created an aggressive and competitive culture that didn’t contain any communication, honesty, truthfulness, or ethics within the company. Ebbers also created an individualistic culture where the boss was to not be questioned. All this…

    • 397 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Acc499 Written Assignment

    • 1520 Words
    • 7 Pages

    The Securities and Exchange Commission charged three executives of Electronic Game Card Inc. and their independent auditor with continually lying to investors about the operations and financial condition of the company. The executives had reported to investors that they had millions of dollars in revenues, investments, and an off-shore bank account. In actuality, the bank account did not exist, and the investments were in companies affiliated with two of the executives of the company, Mr. Cole and Mr. Boyne (U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, 2012). Both of these men were charged in the case.…

    • 1520 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    1. Prior to 2002, the U.S. government had very little oversight of the financial practices and corporate governance of public companies and accounting firms. Corporate investors, to include banks, and public company employees took for granted that public companies they invested in or worked for operated ethically in regards to their financial practices. However, this blind faith offered little protection and had devastating consequences for those investors and employees of such powerhouse companies like Enron and WorldCom that went bankrupt without ever publicizing financial hard times. How could this ever happen? According to Horngren, Harrison Jr., and Oliver (2010), both Enron and WorldCom overstated profits, but WorldCom took it a step further by reporting expenses as assets (p. 380).…

    • 1000 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    Bernie Ebbers should have gone to jail. I disagree with the 25 year length of his sentence but he is at least partially to blame for the WorldCom fiasco. I think the government used the length of the sentence to prove a point and the only prior sentence comparable to this was John J. Rigas from Adelphia Communications earlier in the year . I think the CFO Scott Sullivan got a light sentence and consciously knew what he was doing and could have put a stop to it. He should have been the good advisor telling Ebbers not to proceed with this fraud. Ebbers probably could not have figured out how to produce this type of fraud without financial experts doing the dirty work. Even if Ebbers was the one telling his accountants to cook the books, his accountants and the auditors should have put a stop to it. There were too many people that knew what was going on. Somebody should have said this is not right and I could not live with myself if I did this.…

    • 1452 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In 2005 Bernard Ebbers was sentenced to 25 years in prison, one of the toughest sentences imposed on an executive, for overseeing the $11 billion WorldCom Fraud. Three years earlier the fraud came to light reducing the shares of stock worth more than $50 to a few pennies. This was not a minor fraud. Ebbers committed a fraud that caused investors to suffer huge losses. Ebbers was charged with conspiracy and securities fraud, and seven counts of filing false statements to securities regulators. The judge in the case did not seek restitution ore impose fees because Ebbers had forfeited nearly all his personal assets to settle a civil trail filed by the distressed investors.…

    • 745 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    The Sarbanes-Oxley Act

    • 1565 Words
    • 7 Pages

    Many such scandals broke out during the period of 2000-2002, WorldCom, Tyco International, Adelphia, Peregrine Systems were a few to name. These scandals resulted in many investors losing their money, some who had invested their life savings, due to stock price crashes also causing instability in the stock markets. After a series of analysis and discussions, the senate passed a bill call ‘Sarbanes Oxley Act of 2002’.…

    • 1565 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    In July of 2002, five officials of the Adelphia cable-television company were arrested on the charge of gross corporate fraud conducted by members of the Rigas family. The events which transpired during the Adelphia scandal were some of the most egregious to date with an estimated "$100 million, hiding more than $2 billion in debt the family incured, and lying to the public about Adelphia 's operations and financial condition (Grant and Nuzum, 2004, p. A1)." During the course of the proceedings it was determined that the Rigas family had been plundering corporate funds in a manner very reminiscent of the Enron accounting scandal one year prior. Both of these companies acted in a decidedly un-deontological manner raising the needs of the self-interested few over the desire to act in a fair and equitable manner. It is their decision to act in this egotistical manner which ultimately brought them to this unfortunate outcome. Before analyzing what the Adelphia officers had done wrong, we should first define the boundaries with which we are judging them by.…

    • 1542 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Policy Paper Sarbanes-Oxley

    • 5149 Words
    • 21 Pages

    The corporate scandals in the year 2001 of Enron and WorldCom, where Enron was able to produce fake reports of high profits with false accounting methods and WorldCom, who artificially reduced their expenses to falsely increase in the appearance of their revenues, created a market failure. Major stakeholders such as investors, government,…

    • 5149 Words
    • 21 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Best Essays

    Li, Y. (2010). The Case Analysis of the Scandal of Enron. International journal of business and…

    • 2798 Words
    • 12 Pages
    Best Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    2. Please state the actions and corporate culture/corporate values that contributed to the WorldCom scandal. Base this on the description of the case on pages 43-45 of our text.…

    • 1501 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Case 5 & 6 History :Accounting Irregularities at WorldComBernard J. (Bernie) Ebbers from the beginning “was a man who believed in himself and his company” a statement which was best expressed by the way in which he performed duties to his company. WorldCom thus, became the second largest telecommunications…

    • 4546 Words
    • 12 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Better Essays

    World Com

    • 530 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Ideally, the conversation on whether or not to withhold findings for one quarter would start with the question, “Why?” This would lead to research on how money was being reported in the books and as a result, the team would have found that WorldCon was substantially overstating their profits by writing off the phone-line leases as a capital expense instead of an operating expense. Cooper’s team then would be left with a decision, to hold back on findings, which would falsify the records, or to reject Sullivan’s request and potentially bring the company down?…

    • 530 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Better Essays