Synopsis
THE NUMBER profiles the culture of malfeasance in the American business world. Berenson looks back over a hundred years at the various virtuous and vicious cycles that have played out economically, arguing that the accounting industry has long codified questionable practices that ushered in the age of Enron and Worldcom. This book contends that reform may not be possible so long as the market is concerned with on-paper profit at the expense of ethical conduct.
| Details | | Publication Date: | 2004-04-01 | | Edition Description: | Reprint |
| Size | | Length: | 320 pages | | Height: | 8.3 in | | Width: | 5.3 in | | Thickness: | 0.8 in | | Weight: | 8.8 oz |
Publisher's Note
With a new Afterword by the author and a new Foreword by Mark Cuban
In this commanding big-picture analysis of what went wrong in corporate America, Alex Berenson, a top financial investigative reporter for The New York Times, examines the common thread connecting Enron, Worldcom, Halliburton, Computer Associates, Tyco, and other recent corporate scandals: the cult of the number.
Every three months, 14,000 publicly traded companies report sales and profits to their shareholders. Nothing is more important in these quarterly announcements than earnings per share, the lodestar that investors—and these days, that’s most of us—use to judge the health of corporate America. earnings per share is the number for which all other numbers are sacrificed. It is the distilled truth of a company’s health.
Too bad it’s often a lie.
Alex Berenson’s The Number provides a comprehensiv, brutally factual overview of how Wall Street and corporate America lost their way during the great bull market that began in 1982. With wit and a broad historical perspective, Berenson puts recent corporate accounting (or accountability) disasters in their proper context. He explains how the wheels came off the wagon, giving readers the information and analysis they need to understand Enron, Tyco, WorldCom, Halliburton, and the rest of the corporate calamities of our times.
Industry Reviews
"[Berenson's] coruscating portrait of the boldness and reach of corporate fraud of the past five years years is a clarion cry for reform."
Publishers Weekly (02/10/2003)
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