Whether Further Regulations are Warranted
When deciding whether the Wormald experience should or should not be grounds for accounting regulators to require half-yearly financial results to be audited, several issues need to be considered:
Availability of resources; the impact of additional regulations of the business community as a whole; timing issues; the benefits that will be derived from additional requirements; the additional costs in implementing such requirements.
Whilst on the face of it, it is easy to agree that another Wormald situation should not be allowed to happen, one also needs to remind oneself that if the situation is irregular, surely there are enough regulations already in place to deal with such situations. In fact, the Wormald example illustrates that there are sufficient regulations in place. For on becoming concerned with the financial information that Wormald was publishing, the NCSC was in a position of authority to request that a company's interim reports be audited.
So whilst agreeing that audited interim reports would provide more accurate reporting of the financial position of a company, it possibly cannot be justified on an economic and financial basis.
Conclusion
The relationship between accounting choices made by management and the values reported in financial statements appear to be affected by: the financial contracts made between principal and agent; regulations imposed by professional, statutory and political bodies and the maintenance of a reputation both in the debt and stock markets. Bearing this in mind, management will continue to use its discretion in the selection of appropriate accounting techniques when preparing financial reports.
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