Home / Courses
Corporate Collapse
UoS Code ACCT6116
Credit points 6
Offered Semester 1
Prerequisites ACCT5001
Corequisites
Prohibitions
Assumed Knowledge ACCT6001
Additional Information Department Permission required for enrolment
Lectures 1 x 3hr class per week
Assessment Case studies - oral and written presentation; Class participation; Final examination
Description This unit seeks to identify the organic characteristics of corporate crises with a view to providing insight to the nature, pattern, and development of, and the signals heralding, the managerial, organisational and financial factors contributing to corporate distress, sometimes resulting ultimately in collapse. Further, implications for regulations and governance of corporate affairs are explored. Historical and current cases are examined. Matters related to historical cases such as Insull and Kreuger in the US and Royal Mail in the UK, and modern cases like Enron, WorldCom, HIH, One.Tel, Parmalat, Westpoint, Fincorp and James Hardie are discussed. The unit adopts a forensic accounting and managerial analysis of corporate events. Forensic, insofar as many of the insights into the accounting and managerial practices used come from the dissection, an autopsy, of failed companies. Because of the ineffectiveness of many corporate governance mechanisms in place, frequently such insights are discoverable only after the failure or distress has arisen.