During the past 30 years, a wide variety of new financial instruments have been introduced into the marketplace. In addition to the traditional basic securities of common stock, preferred stock, and bonds, one can now also own convertible bonds, convertible... 

During the late 1990s and early 2000s, companies increasingly made reference in press releases and published materials to an alternative measure of performance, loosely [if inaccurately] referred to as “pro forma earnings”  [The term “pro forma”... 

As mentioned on my previous post [How Accounting Could be Used to Inflate Revenue] , valuations are commonly based on earnings estimates. Thus, it is not surprising that executives might be tempted to manipulate earnings in order to increase the value...