In the last 10 years, there have been a number of high-profile incidents in which companies have adversely impacted investors and their own profitability because of measurement error or measurement bias in financial statements and reports.

The company that I choose to write about is World-Com. Like many companies out there, World Com was one of those that committed fraud on their books for a long time. From 1999 until 2002, World-Com suffered one of the largest public company accounting frauds in history. As enormous as this scam was it, was accomplished in a relatively mundane way. More than $9 billion in false or unsupported accounting entries were made in WorldComs financial systems to achieve desired reported financial results. In 1999, revenue growth slowed, and the stock price began falling. WorldCom's expenses as a percentage of its total revenue increased because the growth rate of its earnings dropped. It meant WorldCom's earnings might not have meet Wall Street analysts' expectations. To increase revenue, WorldCom reduced the amount of money it held in reserve to cover liabilities for the companies it had acquired for $2.8 billion and moved this money into the revenue line of its financial statements. In 2000, WorldCom began classifying operating expenses as long-term capital investments. Hiding these expenses in this way gave them another $3.85 billion. The fraud occurred because of knowing misconduct directed by a few senior executives centered in its Clinton, Mississippi headquarters, and implemented by personnel in its financial and accounting departments in several locations. The fraud was the consequence of the way WorldComs Chief Executive Officer, Bernard J. Ebbers, who ran the Company. The fraud continued as long as it did due to a lack of courage to blow the whistle on the part of others in WorldComs financial and accounting departments, and inadequate audits by Arthur Andersen; and an economic system whose controls were sorely deficient. The consequences of World Com action was the loss of billions of investors money. A lot of people lost their saving and retirement money due to their actions. Many shareholders are still hoping for some form of monetary compensation. A massive class-action suit filed by several large state pension and retirement funds along with several hundred thousand individual investors has already recouped more than $6 billion in settlements from banks that were involved in the sales or underwriting of bonds issued by World-Com. The company should place more increased on emphasizing on performing services for auditing. Importantly, they should be as transparent as possible.

For chegg accounting/finance tutor, in your responses to the above post, confirm or challenge the above recommendations for improving accounting quality and offer additional recommendations. Discuss whether you think this may indicate a trend in regard to accounting quality (or a lack thereof). Ask question if need? Also, I am kindly asking to respond with no plagiarism