>>Consider Lucent Technologies Inc., which is the subject of an
>>investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission into
>>accounting irregularities. The company has acknowledged it used a
>>host of customer incentives, one-time credits and practices like
>>channel-stuffing, or shipping more product to its dealers than
>>demand warranted, in order to reach sales targets. "It began with
>>setting growth objectives that could not be sustained," a contrite
>>Henry Schacht, Lucent's CEO, told analysts in December. The company
>>has denied wrongdoing, and says it is cooperating with the SEC
>>probe.
>
>Not to worry. Consider Doug's soothing words of Feb. 4: "Lenin ...
>said that company accounts were getting increasingly murky, in order
>to hide all kinds of self-dealing and other financial chicanery.
>While there are some exceptions, this is hardly an accurate
>description of the present, when 'transparency' is all the rage."
So how do we know about Lucent, why did the WSJ run a front-page story about their chicanery the other week, why is the SEC investigating, and why is their stock price about 90% off their high? Big stockholders don't mind a bit of embellishment now & then, but outright deception pisses them off.
Doug