Financial shenanigans often pushed, poll finds

Associated Press

BOSTON — About one in six chief financial officers reports being pressured by chief executives to misrepresent financial results, and 5 percent say they've violated accounting rules in the past five years, according to a new survey.

The study, published in yesterday's edition of CFO magazine, comes in the midst of continued worries about the integrity of earnings reports and a number of high-profile arrests, including those yesterday of two former WorldCom executives on fraud and conspiracy charges.

Julia Homer, the magazine's editor in chief, said the figures were not surprising.

"It's very common knowledge," she said. "Anecdotally, we've heard quite a bit over the last few years about the pressure on companies to make those quarterly earnings estimates."

Of 141 CFOs of public companies who responded to the survey, 17 percent said they'd been pressured by CEOs and 5 percent acknowledged violating GAAP, or "generally accepted accounting principles," once in the past five years. Two-thirds of the 141 respondents worked at companies with more than $1 billion in annual revenues.

Still, 93 percent denied engaging in aggressive accounting practices.

"One clear message is that not everybody responds to the pressure," Homer said.

The magazine did not say how many CFOs received the survey. No margin of error for the poll was given.