[X] My Assistant

[apollo124]

And for your reading assignment, dig up your old copy of Corporate Shadowfiles, page 24. It goes over this stuff in some pretty good detail. It's a good read too and helpful for a layman to understand a little of the corp dominated world we live in today.

[Shockwave_IIc]

Quite true, very good read. One of the books i got my mate to return to me, when he visited from SA.

[Cthulhudreams]

There is no obligation to do any sort of financial reporting - look at what companies on the pink sheets have to provide in terms of disclosure. Most of that stuff is a condition of being listed on a stock exchange, which SK might not be.

[Snow_Fox]

but failing to explain/display some numbers is going to discourage people, 'what's he hiding?'

[Lofwyr's mas...]

Except that I don't think he cares what people think he's hiding. For public companies that's a consideration when they decide what information to release, but S-K isn't a public company.

I second the mention of Shadowfiles. Some parts of it are like a stock primer with shadowtalk, which is more awesome than it sounds.

[Snow_Fox]

He might not care what Joe Public thinks but take it up a notch. If they think he's in trouble a corp might heistate to go into business with him and before you say he could buy the corps he wants, sure but it's cheaper just to do business with them when he needs them-renting space instead of buying a facility- but if they think he's low on funds, they might want a bigger deposit. just as an example

[Leofski]

While in broad terms thats right, at the end of the day a fully itemised accounting isn't what they're aiming to put out. Expect reports with slightly less depth than government spending reports to be available.

[Cthulhudreams]

Sure, but that means he can annouce whatever numbers he feels like. Look at what big 4 companies annouce to the world today. They give you a revenue figure, and they'll also, if you press and are important, provide you with a 'banking referee' who will be the local partnerships in country client manager, and all they'll say is that "PWC is indeed solvent and making money"

You don't see people being reluctant to go into business with the big 4 accounting firms.

[Snow_Fox]

Yeah, but there use to be 5 accounting firms.

Lehman Brothers took a bad hit this week based on reports.

[Cthulhudreams]

There used to be 10. It's a sector with a lot of consolidation. I mean heck that almost makes my point. The big 4 disclose virtually nothing, have been known to explode without warning, and people still do business with them.

Arn't the Lehman brothers publicly traded and thus have full SEC disclosure?

[Snow_Fox]

Pepole do business with them because there's little enough choices but when it went from 5 to 4 it was not consolidation it was a collapse.

another great example of cooking the books? Eron. Their reports did reveal it all, until audits andfate showed that the subsidiaries they were dealing with didn't exist-and please don't ask for an explanation of the mark to market acocunting system,

[Lofwyr's mas...]

Yeah, your choice if you refuse to do business with S-K is to do business with...like, Ares or Mitushama or someone. Who likely provide the same lack of useful information to their shareholders. That's the problem with oligopolies. They don't have to provide anything in particular unless the other ones also do it.

When I think of it, other megas might pay better dividends, or any other kinds of perks, since they want to please stockholders instead of making them go away. But they don't have any more interest in giving them any power than S-K does.

[Velocity219e]

I recall reading something about some major enviromental groups owning shares in oil and chemical companies just so they can send representatives undercover to their shareholder meetings and to gather information quietly and legitimately.

[Cthulhudreams]

Pepole do business with them because there's little enough choices but when it went from 5 to 4 it was not consolidation it was a collapse.

I know, thats why I said 'explode without warning' That and you missed that while 1 of them was a collapse, the disappearance of the other 5 was consolidation.

The intresting thing is that in the SR enviroment, no firm can ever have full disclosure, because they all run illegal black ops programs, thus the auditors cannot sign off on their accounts.