Quote:
Originally Posted by chillrob
I don't claim to understand the details...if I did, I would be someone more important, like President.
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Trump is probably a good example against you. For privately held companies, they have incentive and lack oversight to make these accounting tricks work.
Public companies lack incentive (bonuses are tied to stock price which is tied to publicly stated earnings) and have oversight (GAAP accounting). The pressure is usually to overstate earnings, not understate them.
Caesars played with this distinction a while back. A hedge fund group took it off the market so that it could make long term changes without the shareholders looking over their shoulders, and put it back on the market when they were done.
The main reason I brought up MGM is that I used to be a shareholder, their quarterly reports still show up on my Google Alerts and various financial websites. If you have reason to suspect they are not being compliant with relevant laws, you should either buy or short shares for a freeroll - if you make money, you rub it in your titties and walk away; if you lose money, you claim they misled the public and sue them.