LoPucki's provocative critique of Chapter 11 is required reading for everyone who cares about bankruptcy reform. This empirical account of large Chapter 11 cases will trigger intense debate both inside the academy and on the floor of Congress. Confronting LoPucki's controversial thesis-that competition between bankruptcy judges is corrupting them-is the most pressing challenge now facing any defender of the status quo." -Douglas Baird, University of Chicago Law School "This book is smart, shocking and funny. This story has everything-professional greed, wrecked companies, and embarrassed judges. Insiders are already buzzing." -Elizabeth Warren, Leo Gottlieb Professor of Law, Harvard Law School "LoPucki provides a scathing attack on reorganization practice. Courting Failure recounts how lawyers, managers and judges have transformed Chapter 11. It uses empirical data to explore how the interests of the various participants have combined to create a system markedly different from the one envisioned by Congress. LoPucki not only questions the wisdom of these changes but also the free market ideology that supports much of the general regulation of the corporate sector." -Robert Rasmussen, University of Chicago Law School A sobering chronicle of our broken bankruptcy-court system, Courting Failure exposes yet another American institution corrupted by greed, avarice, and the thirst for power. Lynn LoPucki's eye-opening account of the widespread and systematic decay of America's bankruptcy courts is a blockbuster story that has yet to be reported in the media. LoPucki reveals the profound corruption in the U.S. bankruptcy system and how this breakdown has directly led to the major corporate failures of the last decade, including Enron, MCI, WorldCom, and Global Crossing. LoPucki, one of the nation's leading experts on bankruptcy law, offers a clear and compelling picture of the destructive power of "forum shopping," in which corporations choose courts that offer the most favorable outcome for bankruptcy litigation. The courts, lured by big money and prestige, streamline their requirements and lower their standards to compete for these lucrative cases. The result has been a series of increasingly shoddy reorganizations of major American corporations, proposed by greedy corporate executives and authorized by case-hungry judges.

This book is for anyone who wants to know what truly lies behind the scandals and disasters of global business which marred the first few years of the 21st century. It examines why companies fail, finding the reasons few, yet all too common. It also explores what the prudent investor, board member or manager should be alert to but often is not.

George J. Benston, professor of Finance, Accounting, and Economics at Emory University's Goizueta Business School, died unexpectedly in January 2008. He was an impassioned advocate for corporate integrity and a unique scholar; his research interests were as broad as those of any recent academician. His colleagues have selected and organized his most important papers into two volumes. This second volume consists of his publications in the fields of accounting and finance. The editor has selected a broad range of papers from each of the major areas that are representative of Benston's work in th.

Public companies now face constant pressure to meet investor expectations. A company must continually deliver strong short-term performance every quarter to maintain its stock price. This valuation treadmill creates incentives for corporations to deceive investors. Published more than twenty years after the passage of Sarbanes-Oxley, which requires all public companies to invest in measures to ensure the accuracy of their disclosures, The Valuation Treadmill shows how securities fraud became a major regulatory concern. Drawing on case studies of paradigmatic securities enforcement actions involving Xerox, Penn Central, Apple, Enron, Citigroup, and General Electric, the book argues that corporate securities fraud emerged as investors increasingly valued companies based on their future performance. Corporations now have an incentive to issue unrealistically optimistic disclosure to convince markets that their success will continue. Securities regulation must do more to protect the integrity of public companies from the pressure of the valuation treadmill.

In contrast to the time-line narratives of previous books on Enron that offer interesting but largely unsystematic insight into individual actions and organizational processes, Innovation Corrupted pursues a more methodical analysis of the causes and lessons of Enron's collapse.

Comprising contributions from a unique mixture of academics, standard setters and practitioners, and edited by an internationally recognized expert, this book, on a controversial and intensely debated topic, is the only definitive reference source available on the topics of fair value and financial reporting. Drawing chapters from a diverse range of contributors on different aspects of the subject together into one volume, it: examines the use of fair value in international financial reporting standards and the US standard SFAS 157 Fair Value Measurement, setting out the case for and against looks at fair value from a number of different theoretical perspectives, including possible future uses, alternative measurement paradigms and how it compares with other valuation models explores fair value accounting in practice, including audit, financial instruments, impairments, an investment banking perspective, approaches to fair value in Japan and the USA, and Enron’s use of fair value An outstanding resource, this volume is an indispensable reference that is deserving of a place on the bookshelves of both libraries and all those working in, studying, or researching the areas of international accounting, financial accounting and reporting.