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Company Background : Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. was a firm specialized in the provision of global financial services. It was founded in Montgomery, Alabama, in the United States of America. The company had headquarters in New York City, New York, in the U.S. It ceased operations in 2008. The founders were: Henry Lehman, Emmanuel Lehman and Mayer Lehman. What Happened? Lehman Brothers hid over $50 billion in loans disguised as sales. They allegedly sold toxic assets [1] to Cayman Island Banks with the understanding that they would eventually be rebought. How they were caught : Their bankruptcy led to the discovery of the fraud. They filed for bankruptcy in 2008, which is the largest bankruptcy ever recorded. Their case was larger than that of Enron, Washington Mutual, WorldCom and GM combined.  On September 15, 2008, Lehman brothers filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection  (Montgomery, n.d.) . Their bankruptcy filing came in as a blow to the financial indu...

A forensic accountant is said to be one who has mastered the science of accounting and is able to assist lawyers and the courts to understand and supply accounting issues to the law and to disputed matters. Forensic accountants investigate financial crimes in accounting. A crime is an offence, an illegal activity as defined by law, punishable by law. There are 7 conditions that form the legal basis or the acknowledgement of crime. All must be present for an action to be considered criminal. They are as follows: ·     The act requirement : There must be a conscious intention between mind and body – a physical movement that results from the determination or effort of the actor. ·       The legality requirement : The act/action must be prohibited by law. ·     The harm requirement : Harm must be created as a result of the crime/offence, without which the crime is incomplete. ·        The causation requirement...

IT infrastructure can be defined from two main perspectives. These are the technical and service perspectives. The Technical perspective is defined as the shared technology resources that provide the platform for the firm’s specific information system applications. It consists of a set of physical devices and software applications that are required to operate the entire enterprise. From the service perspective, IT infrastructure is defined as providing the foundation for serving customers, working with vendors, and managing internal firm business processes. In this sense, IT infrastructure focuses on the services provided by all the hardware and software. IT infrastructure is a set of firm-wide services budgeted by management and comprising both human and technical capabilities. IT infrastructure today is composed of seven major components. These are: internet platforms, computer hardware platforms, operating systems platforms, operating system platforms, Enterprise Softw...

An information system is any organized combination of people, hardware, software, communications networks, and data resources that stores, retrieves, transforms, and disseminates information in an organization (O'Brien & Marakas, 2006) . Information systems have three main roles in business: support strategies for competitive advantage; support business decision-making; and support business processes and operations. This fall in line with the six major strategic business objectives ( Operational excellence; New products, services, and business models; Customer and supplier intimacy; Improved decision making; Competitive advantage; and Survival). Operational excellence Operational excellence involves the improvement of efficiency to attain higher profitability. Information systems enabled by technology are reliable tools for achieving greater efficiency and productivity. Customers should be able to perceive operational excellence as it transmits through ease in cus...

Most people have the incorrect belief that ethics and profit maximization are non-congruent or parallel goals that cannot be pursued by a business simultaneously. No, profit maximization and ethics are not mutually exclusive. The truth is, ethical companies can be profitable, and very profitable indeed. When ethics and profit maximization are combined, the output is responsible business. Ethisphere Institute – the global leader in defining and advancing the standards of ethical business practices and standards that fuel corporate character, marketplace trust and business success, in its 2014 release of the world’s most ethical companies listed many globally recognizable mega corporations like Microsoft, T-Mobile USA and Delphi. This defies the misconception that ethical companies cannot be very profitable. Ethics is also of utmost important for the bottom line Small and Medium sized Enterprises (SMEs). When customers, investors and other stakeholders lose trust in a business be...

Enron Corporation was an American energy company, which also dealt in commodities and services such as electricity, natural gas, pulp and paper, and communications. This company enjoyed untold success until it went bankrupt in 2001. At the close of 2001, Enron’s institutionalized, systematic, and ingeniously planned accounting fraud (known as the Enron scandal) was uncovered. The Enron scandal has since then become one among the most prominent examples of self-willed corporate fraud and corruption. Enron was involved in large scale financial statement fraud. Enron got into debt after several years of domestic and international expansion, involving complicated contracts and deals. It managed to conceal its debt from shareholders by getting into partnerships with other companies, practicing fraudulent accounting, and getting illegal loans. Partnerships Enron had with entities such as RADR and Chewco (funded by Enron executives) permitted the concealment of the debt. On Aug...