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Microcap & Penny Stocks : TGL WHAAAAAAAT! Alerts, thoughts, discussion. -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Jim Bishop who wrote (81864)	3/14/2001 3:41:31 PM
From: Bernard Ng	Respond to of 150070

Looks like it's a positive trade, Jim. Congrats. ;-) EOM Bernard

To: Jim Bishop who wrote (81864)	3/14/2001 3:53:50 PM
From: KZAP	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 150070

Alert! Daytrade: NXTL trading @ 15 should open up above 16 tomorrow. :o) SONS has been a great roller lately also! Happy Investing! KZAP

To: Jim Bishop who wrote (81864)	3/14/2001 4:07:59 PM
From: dkgross	Respond to of 150070

WHOOHOOO!!! I've been holding (and down about 60%) on FASC for about a year now. The bashers on RB have had a field day for the past 6 months. Glad I held!!!!! dave

To: Jim Bishop who wrote (81864)	3/14/2001 4:34:47 PM
From: john	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 150070

SEC to Inspect Annual Reports for Signs of Accounting Fraud Washington, March 14 (Bloomberg) -- The Securities and Exchange Commission will inspect thousands of new annual reports from companies next month, looking for signs of revenue manipulation, SEC officials said. The SEC's yearly review will cover the annual reports of as many as 3,000 companies, about one-fourth of all U.S. public corporations, said Robert Bayless, chief accountant of the SEC's corporation finance division. That's nearly four times the number of reports that were examined last year. The watchdog agency also will apply rigorous new federal standards on how companies should record revenue, SEC Chief Accountant Lynn Turner said in an interview. ``If we'd been doing this a year or two ago, I suspect we wouldn't have had a Lucent or a Xerox,'' Turner said. Lucent Technologies Inc., the largest phone-equipment maker, and Xerox Corp., the largest copier company, are among several companies that have announced in recent months that they are under SEC inquiry for possible accounting fraud. Investor losses from corporate accounting fraud have snowballed to more than $100 billion in the last eight years, Turner said. Abuses in revenue recognition have been the No. 1 source of recent financial fraud, he said. These abuses typically have occurred when companies booked revenue for sales that never took place or that hadn't been confirmed, or when they accelerated or deferred revenue to another quarter, Turner said. Skepticism Some corporate groups expressed skepticism that the SEC's expanded review would have much impact on accounting fraud. ``People intent on committing fraud will do it despite the rules, and will do a darn good job of hiding it,'' said Brian Borders, president of the Association of Publicly Traded Companies. ``People filing reports in a timely manner are probably not the ones likely to commit it.'' Borders, whose group consists of hundreds of small- and mid- sized public companies, also said SEC-mandated changes in the structure of annual reports might confuse investors. Shareholders might have trouble comparing a company's current results to those from previous years, as well as results of different companies in the same industry, he said. The American Institute of Certified Public Accountants, the largest accounting trade group, declined comment on the SEC's plans for expanding and toughening its review of annual reports. The SEC implemented tougher new guidance on revenue recognition last December. One provision of this Staff Accounting Bulletin No. 101 requires companies to wait until a product is delivered and accepted by a customer before they record a sale. Other Concerns The SEC review of annual reports, which are due to be filed with the government by March 31, will focus on several issues besides revenue recognition, Bayless said in a recent speech. These other areas are a company's division-by-division breakdown of revenue, as well as its disclosures of credit risk, derivatives use and market risk, he said. The examination will begin in the first half of April, SEC Deputy Corporation-Finance Director Michael McAlevey said in an interview. SEC employees then will spend about a month combing through the filings. SEC officials declined to disclose the criteria that will be used to select which annual reports will undergo review. The SEC might ask some companies to revise their reports, McAlevey said. If they balk at requested changes, the agency might take that into account the next time the companies register to sell stock or participate in a merger or acquisition, he said. Companies are required to separate out revenue for each of their businesses, a practice known as ``segment disclosure,'' so that investors can see how each area is performing, McAlevey said. Many corporations have resisted making these breakdowns in recent years, he said. ``Let me warn you that our patience with deficient segment disclosure has been exhausted,'' Bayless said in a speech earlier this month to securities lawyers at the SEC Speaks conference. Former SEC Chairman Arthur Levitt, who retired last month, traced many recent cases of accounting fraud to executives of public companies who manipulated results to meet Wall Street analysts' forecasts and to prop up their companies' stock prices. The biggest losses -- as measured by a company's drop in market value a week after accounting irregularities were disclosed -- have been at Cendant Corp., MicroStrategy Inc., and McKesson HBOC Inc., the SEC's Turner said. Mar/14/2001 10:25 ET For more stories from Bloomberg News, click here. (C) Copyright 2001 Bloomberg