Financial Accounting For Favorable Financial Market: Consequences And Aftermaths Of Corporate Collapses In Australia

Case scenarios of companies that led up to the liquidation

Discuss about the Financial Accounting for Favorable Financial Market.

Before the year of 2007, the global markets enjoyed favorable financial market conditions due to private equity boom. However, the Global Financial Crisis in the second half of 2007 resulted in an integrated and continuing crisis of financial that remains unresolved. Evidence suggests that there were several Australian companies have already been collapsed after suffering financial difficulties (Lu et al. 2013). During the circumstances, several numbers of investors have been suffering considerable losses in the capital market of Australia. To highlight the similar business conditions in the past, it is definitely necessary to understand the reason behind such recent corporate collapses in Australia such as HIH Insurance, One.Tel and ABC Learning.

Based on the diverse scenarios which putting companies into liquidation, this assignment will find out the consequences and aftermath of events related to the corporate collapses. The purpose of the report is to understand factors that influence the winding up order and breaches of corporate ethics and governance during the period of financial stress. At the initial stage, the assignment will highlight the causes of corporate collapses considering the case scenarios of companies which are mentioned above. In the second part, issues like ethics and governance will be explained which significantly breaches during the financial stress period. Lastly, the significant influence of liabilities in the contribution to the liquidation of the company will also incorporate in this assignment.

Case scenarios of companies that led up to the liquidation

There are several companies have recently faced the adverse financial conditions and later financial collapses.   The process of liquidation unfolds different regulatory consequences. Most of the companies have not been able to mitigate their financial obligations when they fell due. In other words, the lack of financial disclosures, ignorance of fundamentals of sound accounting principles is the common features of financial crisis (Guariglia,  Spaliara and Tsoukas 2015). The collapse of ABC learning is the perfect example of what happens when the accounting entities does not follow fundamental accounting principles in their due courses. At the end of 2006, ABC Learning was trading on the share market with the value of $8.60 and performed around one in five child care in Australia. Within the two year’s time span, the shares were valued around 54 cents and the company was placed in the hands of administrators. Later it was observed that ABC learning has wiped out the uncertain claims to represent huge profit at the end of the fiscal year. The company was not considered the amount of annualized interest bill of $12 million. Now the scale of profits reported by ABC Learning is a matter of questionable accounting practices because the misstatement of revenues and earnings in the half –year accounts has been main cause of this corporate collapse (Titman 2013). ABC’s aggressive acquisitions and the representation of the false intangible assets put the company into the liquidation (Sumsion 2012). In other sense, the exaggerated values of assets and the crisis of liquidity at the end of the entity’s report were the main causes of the financial debacle of this child care provider.

Factors of ethics and governance in the company’s financial crisis

The incredible fall of HIH Insurance is another case scenario where the entity faced the huge debt in the year of 2001. This is one of the biggest corporate collapses where the insurance company collapsed with debt of about $5.3 billion (Townsend 2008). It was found later that the company transformed their losses into gain by “under-reserving” and applying the “financial reinsurance” contracts. During the expansion phase, the company distracted the interest of investors for the aggressive acquisitions made by the company and finishing in paying $300 million for “FAI Insurances” in the year of 1998. At the time of takeover, both HIH Insurance and FAI were “insolvent” commercially, although the company was represented a false impression to their stakeholders. The statement of performance of HIH was shown strong financial condition made the entire financial report “inaccurate”.

After the liquidation of HIH, the Australian economy faced the same financial crisis with the corporate collapse of OneTel. This telecommunications company in Australia faced the operating loss of AU$291 million in 2000. According to Titman (2013) both companies faced problems including unstable business strategies, aggressive reporting of financials, poor auditing and unsatisfied corporate governance and less effective working capital mechanism. It was reported that the fundamental problem at both the companies was the individual eagerness in chasing “low yield business” without the planning of adequate working capital to mitigate the future obligations. Many of the market participants and shareholders of companies confirmed that HIH was faced difficulties due to its “aggressive acquisition strategy”. On the other hand, the inadequate corporate governance was the major factor of business liquidation of One Tel.  Despite the company having the strong position in seven countries with the figure of annual sales of $Au$653 at the time of the company’s winding up offer ensured that OneTel had a dangerous conflict between maximization of profit and the implementation of the sound procedure of corporate  governance (Guariglia Spaliara. and Tsoukas 2015).

By the framework of ethical considerations and the sound corporate governance, the reporting entities represent the corporate social responsibilities and financial truth to their shareholders (Tricker 2015). It is all about the control of the power and responsibilities enforcing the values of transparency, professionalism and majority of collective actions that helps to develop the ethical conduct (Bainbridge 2012). In all the above mentioned case scenarios, companies associated with the corporate collapses were failed to maintained transparent financial records and violated the general framework and guidelines of managers of large companies. 

The associated inherent risk with the valuation of the assets were ignored by the management of ABC Learning is a sense of lack of ethics because the organization was not maintained sound accounting practices and uphold their ethical responsibilities. Furthermore, it was said by Dr Philip Ross, the accounting head of the “University of Western Sydney” explained the financial debacle of ABC Learning as the “failure of regulatory and accounting processes”. This can be said that the corporate ethics and governance can lead the financial crisis and inflated the situation of liquidation (Sumsion 2012). The founder of Eddy Groves never concerned about the corporate governance and thus, made ABC Learning into the number of related party transactions under his control. For instance, ABC paid Austock, the broking firm for receiving stake of $27 million in transaction fees. Similarly, the company paid for the untendered renovation and maintenance services of Queensland of the amount of $74 million. To clarify all the transactions, the company always argued that all the mentioned transactions were conducted at “arm’s length”. However, the investors failed that it is completely an example of poor corporate governance activities that negative influence the reputation of the company and reduced the level of investors’ confidence. Moreover ABC’s auditor Ernst & Young revealed a lot of deliberate attempts to accelerate the revenue at the end of the reporting period. For instance, the auditor identified that the management of ABC Learning reported the compensation payments from the premium developers as the revenue. The sub-standard maintenance of books of account was one of the prime ethical issues in the case of ABC Learning.

On the other hand, a number of Directors were found guilty for breaching their duties as directors under the Act of Corporations. After the financial debacle, the significant involvement in the unfair accounting practices of the management people, made them liable for substantial financial penalties. It was pointed out by several journals that all these act of HIH insurance was the example of the breach of ethical behavior (Gillespie and Hurley 2013). However the glaring corporate deficiencies which resulted in the downfall of the HIH came as a shock by many of the observers because the company was maintained a “conservative corporate culture” over the long period of time. Nevertheless, the “aggressive acquisition strategy” of HIH Insurance Company never satisfied the interest of shareholders and the firm’s financial difficulties was largely attributed to these kinds of approaches and financial dilemmas during the maintenance of governance procedures of the corporation. Thus, it was inevitable that the financial crisis of the company was accelerated by the failure of ethical consideration and lack of effectiveness in terms of enforcement and monitoring practices of due diligence (Gillespie and Hurley 2013). Similarly, OneTel collapsed due to number corporate governance failures. Primarily, the two board of directors had excessive control over the decision making procedures among the other board members of the company. Secondly, the lack of financial disclosures had created dissatisfaction among the large investors. OneTel led the investor’s interest down because the board of directors extensively towards the direction of the CEO’s and other executive members of the company instead of large shareholders.  This was the reason, the company was not disclosed their true financial position at the time when the firm itself became insolvent. This is the perfect example of the ethical breach and poor governance of the management. Thirdly, the non-executive directors of OneTel were failed to maintain an ineffective role due to close association of the CEOs.  Furthermore, there was a huge conflict between the management and auditors of the company due to its provision of non-audit services to the firm. Lastly,  it was   a complete corporate governance failure that the board of directors were not functioned independently and  was not able to control the action of management behavior maintaining the efficiency.

The above discussion clearly indicates that organization may face financial crisis if business or financial leaders does not follow sound accounting practices and uphold the ethical duties.

The liabilities are indeed a major factor in the context of liquidation of corporate entities. In the most of the liquidation cases, companies found guilty due to undisclosed liabilities in their statement of financial performance (Aras 2016). Inabilities of meeting their liabilities have been found a major factor during the initial stages of financial crisis for the corporations. In the case of the HIH Insurance, the company failed to recover the debt of about $5.3 billion. On the other hand, ABC Learning was placed in the hands of administrators due to scare of liquidity and less adequate working capital management of the company (Shann 2016). Thus both the companies failed to mitigate such huge debts and have found the winding up as an only option. It has also been found that there were significant disparities in terms of the quality of the managerial oversights and control procedures which largely generates the financial obligations over the period of time. Therefore, the liabilities can be considered as the major factor to the winding up of the firm.

Conclusion:

As per the ASX guidelines, the companies needs to maintain the best practice approach in corporate governance at the time of the representation of the financial performance of the comapnay in front of stakeholders. The cases of HIH, OneTel and ABC Learning demonstrated that ethical consideration and strong corporate governance can protect companies to the financial crisis. By maintaining the relevant corporate legislation and “voluntary codes”, the companies need to be practiced during the difficult financial condition of reporting entities.

References:

Aras, G., 2016, June. Agency Theory: Explaining or Creating Problems? Good Governance and Ethical Behaviour for Sustainable Business. In 28th Annual Meeting. Sase.

Bainbridge, S.M., 2012. Corporate governance after the financial crisis. Oxford University Press.

Gillespie, N. and Hurley, R., 2013. 8. Trust and the global financial crisis. Handbook of advances in trust research, p.177.

Guariglia, A., Spaliara, M.E. and Tsoukas, S., 2015. To what extent does the interest burden affect firm survival? Evidence from a panel of UK firms during the recent financial crisis. Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics.

Lu, X., Lu, X., Guan, H. and Ye, L., 2013. Collapse simulation of reinforced concrete highâ€Ârise building induced by extreme earthquakes. Earthquake Engineering & Structural Dynamics, 42(5), pp.705-723.

Shann, E., 2016. An economic history of Australia. Cambridge University Press.

Sumsion, J., 2012. ABC Learning and Australian early education and care: a retrospective ethical audit of a radical experiment. Childcare markets local and global: can they deliver an equitable service, pp.209-225.

Titman, S., 2013. Financial markets and investment externalities. The Journal of Finance, 68(4), pp.1307-1329.

Townsend, J. 2008. International Co-operation in Cross-Border Insolvency: HIH Insurance. Modern Law Review, 71(5), pp.811-822.

Tricker, B., 2015. Corporate governance: Principles, policies, and practices. Oxford University Press, USA.