53 Buff. L. Rev. 789
Buffalo Law Review
Summer 2005
Essay
*789 FINANCE THEORY AND ACCOUNTING FRAUD:
FANTASTIC FUTURES VERSUS CONSERVATIVE HISTORIES
Lawrence A. Cunningham d1
Copyright (c) 2005 Buffalo Law Review; Lawrence A. Cunningham
A secret at many leading business schools in the United States is that there is a certain set of intellectual tensions between the accounting and finance departments. The secret should be shared, however, because the underlying reasons for these tensions may help to explain the explosion of public company frauds in the late 1990s and early 2000s. This possibility is important because policymakers responded to those frauds without awareness of the tensions. By ignoring how tools developed in the finance department retard those developed in the accounting department, the value of Congress's reforms is diminished.
Finance theory's rise to intellectual and policy influence began in the 1970s. It threatened accounting's relevance. In essence, it denied that accounting forms matter, holding that markets pierce those forms to determine value independent of accounting presentation. Numerous side effects manifest this theory's dominance. Prominent among them are two practical accounting developments (a movement toward fair value measures and discounted cash flow analysis) and two widespread market practices (pro forma financial reporting and analyst earnings forecasts). These and other side effects reside under *790 the broad chapeau of the forward-looking disclosure regime inaugurated in the 1970s and expanded ever since.
Reforms responding to financial fraud addressed the two pervasive market practices--targeting symptoms of pro forma reporting and analyst forecasting-- but failed to address the disease and have, quite possibly, made financial reporting worse. To correct this oversight, this essay recommends two steps: (1) the forward-looking disclosure regime should include delineation of probable variability in financial data and (2) financial data should be presented in ranges rather than discrete numerals.
I. Tensions
The most powerful theory affecting modern accounting arose outside the discipline, in the competing department of finance. Dubbed modern finance theory, its key concept is the efficient market hypothesis. Under the efficient market hypothesis, all historical information, including accounting data, is rapidly impounded into a company's stock price. Moreover, under this hypothesis, all publicly-available information is accurately interpreted no matter how or where it is presented. Therefore, modern
finance theory, which is widely believed,1 implies that any effort to improve accounting theory or practice is meaningless. Finance theory's contribution to accounting is thus its retardation, for three specific reasons.2
First, efficiency theory holds that the form of presenting accounting information does not matter. If so, there is no point searching for an optimal form. If identical data can be placed anywhere in a set of financial statements (the balance sheet, income statement, cash flow statement, footnotes, or MD&A) and generate the same interpretation and result on price, promoting accounting
quality is *791 wasteful. The disincentives to develop superior accounting are enormous.3
Second, efficiency theory holds that accounting information is instantly useless. Struggles that are central to accounting, such as allocating economic events to discrete time periods, become moot. Irrelevant are traditionally critical--and basic--matters
such as rates of depreciation for long-lived assets and whether to measure inventory using the first-in-first-out method or the last-in-first-out method. It even removes questions about whether and how to account for stock options. Associated costs often
are high and related values fluctuate over multiple periods.4
Third, efficiency theory holds that market price responds to cash flow effects of managerial decisions and policy, not to the effect on reported earnings per share. Companies should, therefore, never seek to manage earnings because investors will see
through it. If so, accounting does not have to develop tools to discourage or detect such massage because it won't happen.5 This implies, in turn, a relatively modest utility for elaborate systems of internal control over financial reporting (which are the heart of reforms adopted in the wake of financial frauds of the late 1990s and early 2000s).
*792 In short, efficiency theory invokes presentiation.6 To presentiate is “[t]o make or render present in place or time; to
cause to be perceived or realized as present.”7 In efficiency theory, all numerical history is absorbed into the current stock price and becomes instantly irrelevant; all that matters is the future and even this gets “discounted” into the price. This model of presentiation pretends to make time disappear. Yet, its enormous power retarded accounting as numerical history and reoriented financial reporting to a forward-looking, less reliable, fraud-tempting emphasis on prognosis.
Consider two leading examples of finance theory's force in driving accounting developments: the fair value movement and cash-flow elevation. Accounting traditionally measures most assets using historical cost. Recording assets at historical cost is appealing because cost usually is observable and thus provides objectivity. It is reliable. Advocates of more ambitious goals
for accounting seek a fair value approach.8 This fair value movement favors *793 reporting all assets on the balance sheet at fair value. The key motivation for fair value accounting is its currency; it is more relevant.
Accounting struggles with the trade-off between reliability and relevance. The result is an accounting system split between these aspirations, usually resolved under accounting's conservatism principle in favor of reliability over relevance. The rising influence of finance caused a shift in accounting to favor relevance over reliability. True, fair value can be reported using appraisals or comparable transactions, but the remaining subjective element puts it in tension with the cardinal accounting tenet of conservatism.
The fair value movement also has implications for revenue determinations. Accounting holds that revenues are not to be recognized until the earnings process generating them is complete (or substantially complete). An exception arises for investments in marketable securities, where gains and losses are recognized according to periodic changes in related market values of the assets. This so-called mark-to-market accounting is quintessentially a quest to bring into accounting a component of the future: investment values are assumed to reflect the present value of the related asset's future cash flow.
Enron's pathologically fiendish managers delighted in the corrosive effects that modern finance theory has on contemporary accounting. Enron persuaded the SEC to approve using mark-to-market accounting in most of its businesses. The company entered into long-term contracts and used fair value measures to assess contract value. Enron's managers then recorded those values as revenue upon contract formation. This practice shredded basic principles of revenue recognition. It made Enron's income statement and balance sheet look ridiculous. Enron's specific escapades reflect widespread cultural obsession with cash flows, justified, in turn, by systematic diminishment of another long-standing principle of accounting, the accrual system.
Accounting's traditional accrual system allocates economic events to discrete fiscal periods based upon a link to underlying business activity. It contrasts with the cash-basis of accounting, which records events when cash is exchanged. The accrual system's key device--the matching *794principle--pursues this aspiration by insisting that expenses burden the income statement of the period in which they contribute to revenue generation (or earlier if this cannot be determined). The focus is on the income statement. The accrual system's theoretical basis includes the stewardship function of accounting information, a fundamentally historical perspective reflecting how well managers have operated a business.
Spurred by finance theory in 1987, a separate statement of cash flows joined the balance sheet and income statement as an
essential component of a set of general purpose financial statements.9 The accrual system obscures cash flows, and the cash flow statement makes them transparent. Financial statement analysts and finance theorists increasingly focus on cash flows, casting doubt upon the utility of the accrual basis of accounting and its focus on the income statement. Consider the following
assertion made by a leading financial economist: cash flow is a fact, while earnings are an opinion.10
The cash flow statement's power opens up possibilities for accounting never plausible with the balance sheet and income statement alone. Some are desirable, but only when all three statements are used together. Thus, for example, the cash flow statement is often superior compared to the balance sheet for measuring accruals as a way to test for the presence of earnings
management in the income *795 statement.11 Historical cash flows are often better indicators of future cash flows than are earnings, although predictions can be improved by using the two together.
On the other hand, a leading use of the cash flow statement is to help make valuation determinations.12 In fact, discounted cash flow (DCF) valuation became, in the latter half of the twentieth century, the dominant valuation method, rendering to history's
dustbins traditional valuation methods using assets or earnings. Despite resistance through the early 1980s,13 DCF is now routinely used to gauge fair value. Institutions ranging from U.S. courts to the World Bank endorse DCF valuation methods.14
Two sets of assumptions are necessary to use DCF, both of which invoke finance rather than accounting concepts. First, on a cash flow statement amounts are usually specified--they are accounting facts--but when analyzing them a wide variety of possibilities
appear. They all start with GAAP earnings but then exclude or include a host of discretionary items.15 Resulting expressions (like EBIT, EBIDTA, and so on) are not accounting concepts.16*796 Rather, they are recent inventions of investment bankers and other financiers.17 Second, DCF analysis projects cash flows into the distant future, at least five years, and often with
estimates using growth rates extending into an infinite horizon period.18 The popularity of DCF thus underlines a shift in the balance of intellectual power towards finance and away from accounting.
Despite finance theory's predictions, managers manipulate accounting forms and markets are fooled, as the late 1990s
dramatically testify.19 Apart from such experience, a burgeoning theoretical and experimental literature draws upon behavioral psychology. Behavioral finance theory undercuts modern finance theory and explains realities that modern finance theory
cannot.20 A key concept is frame dependence, which is a bias to comprehend information differently depending upon how it is presented. This literature's relation to accounting forms is clear. It can matter whether and how stock options are *797
measured and reported on the income statement, even though no cash flows exchange hands.21
A difficulty with behavioral challenges to efficiency theory is their inherent messiness, contrasted with the elegant beauty of efficient markets. Behavioral theories explain a wide range of often conflicting biases, whereas efficiency theory assumes a market behaving as if all actors were economically rational. Finance personifies the old economists' joke about looking for one's car keys under a light in a parking lot because the light is better--despite losing the keys in some other location. It takes too seriously Milton Friedman's specification that the test of an economic theory is not its descriptive accuracy but its
predictive efficacy.22 Even on these terms, moreover, efficiency theory's failure to predict--even affirmatively to obscure--market deception of the late 1990s suggests that it does not pass Freidman's test.
In fact, however, both efficiency and behavioral accounts of market behavior may be partially correct, producing a middle ground. Markets may be substantially efficient, but prone to periodic bouts of moodiness better captured by behavioral theories.
Such bouts appear to have characterized the late 1990s and early 2000s and their *798associated frauds.23If so, this experience suggests that accounting forms matter most when they are least likely to be obeyed. Accounting's traditional numerical history and its income statement are thus particularly important during innovative periods. The late 1990s and early 2000s were such a period, when market appetites grew for prognosis using forecasted cash flows.
In this middle ground, reliable accounting is a central piston in the efficient market engine. Finance and accounting must be melded into complements, not jealous opponents. Attention would center on blending income statements, balance sheets, and cash flow statements, balancing numerical history with prognosis. Alas, the symptoms manifest in the late 1990s showing finance theory's dominance over accounting continues unabated, despite reforms. This is because reforms addressed only the symptoms, not the disease.
II. Symptoms
A simple illustration captures the difference between finance and accounting. If a company sold five widgets last year, it is clearly a lie for its management to report selling six. If management says it expects to sell six widgets next year, it is clearly not a lie to say that they hope to sell seven. Finance is most interested in expectations--focusing on six or seven; accounting is most interested in the facts--that five were sold.
Finance theory thus feeds a common feature of accounting fraud, which is simply to paint rosy views of the future. A manager believes that certain targets can be reached--expecting six and hoping for seven. This belief supports the view that the future reporting of numerical history will be superior--better than five. This can create sufficient managerial optimism to doctor current pictures of numerical history (call it six this year); the tempted manager may believe that the rosier future will be capable of absorbing the difference between actual history and the imagined future. For example, if the company in fact sells *799 five
this year but seven the year after, management can call it six apiece.24
Two salient features of the late 1990s dramatize indulgence of finance theory over accounting practice. These were the proliferation of analyst earnings reports specifying expectations and corporate pro forma figures expressing hopes. Wall Street analysts are steeped in the finance school, not the accounting school. Analysts may actually believe that they, as the market, know better than the results that appear from applying traditional accounting principles. While some undoubtedly take accounting standards seriously and insist on evaluating performance using accounting information, many--during the late 1990s at least--pressured managers into making elaborate forecasts of future performance. This was delicately called “guidance” and led analysts to define and disseminate “expectations.” Many of these analysts, moreover, worked for securities firms whose investment banking department sought underwriting business from the companies that analysts followed. The coziness of the relationship magnified the inclination to extract rosy predictions of the future from the past. For the analyst community, social proof set in: if everyone believes a forecast, it must be true.
These futuristic orientations pressured management to recast actual historical experience, to conform to and facilitate prognostications. The practice of pro forma financial reporting became widespread in the late 1990s and early 2000s. This involved presenting financial data in forms that deliberately varied from GAAP. While managers defended these forms using various obfuscating arguments, including that GAAP just didn't work well for their special business, underlying the practice was an impulse to show how the future would (hopefully) look. The practice was obnoxious, omitting items of ordinary expense and making other GAAP departures to display steadily growing sales, *800 net income, and--most importantly--cash flow. In an era of market bubbles such as the late 1990s, people wanted to believe these giddy pictures of the future. Efficiency theory reinforced the fantasies since participants were able to conclude that the market must be right--a whole new economy must have been born.
These symptomatic practices spawned respective sections of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 cracking down on their
proliferation.25 These reforms, however, fail to rectify underlying demand for prognosis rather than history. Greater emphasis on the future is most evident in the longer-term trend begun in the mid-1970s with the advent of the forward-looking disclosure regime, the disease that breeds finance's dominance over accounting.
III. Disease
Until the late 1970s, the SEC and federal securities law prohibited disclosure of forward-looking information.26 In that period,
market appetite for forward-looking information intensified,27 and participants pressured the SEC to change its stance. After substantial resistance, the SEC relented, allowing forward-looking disclosure. Thereafter, the SEC went further, encouraging,
and sometimes requiring, forward-looking information.28The SEC *801characterizes related disclosure as addressing
“trends and uncertainties” in a business.29This opens up accounting's traditional conservatism towards finance theory's obsession with estimations and discounting the future.
The movement for forward-looking disclosure blossomed in the early 1970s, as efficient market theory ascended.30 Opponents of forward-looking disclosure made three key arguments favoring the SEC's traditional stance prohibiting prognostication.31
First, forward-looking statements are inherently unreliable and misleading per se.32 No one is clairvoyant; management can be no more clairvoyant than investors or other users of financial reports. Second, investors likely would assign undue credence to formal managerial disclosure of forward-looking information, despite this inherent unreliability. Third, forward-looking information is more susceptible to managerial manipulation than hard historical fact. All three objections have proven valid, underscored by the accounting frauds of the late 1990s and early 2000s.
Supporters of forward-looking disclosure emphasized that all investment valuation and related decisions are about the future, a point opponents did not dispute. Disagreement concerned whether managers or investors are better positioned to conduct prognostication. While supporters did not believe either group was clairvoyant, they opined that managers were somehow
better equipped than *802 investors to provide reasonable forecasts.33 This represented a subtle shift in roles: traditionally, managers applied accounting to report results of known events and transactions and investors applied finance tools to make related investment decisions.
Devotees of forward-looking disclosure also redefined the target audience for financial disclosure from the average ordinary investor to the sophisticated investor; this move sought to negate the claim that investors would give undue credence to
managerial forecasts.34 Finally, manipulation risk could be neutralized by imposing on managers an obligation of good faith when providing forward-looking disclosure.35
The debate's resolution led to a system requiring more and more forward-looking disclosure, with SEC releases in 1979, 1982,
and 1989 increasing this orientation.36 Early proponents disagreed as to whether this regime should be voluntary or mandatory; the result was initially an experimental regime based on voluntary disclosure. It gradually moved to one mandating specific
kinds of forward-looking disclosure.37
As for whether forward-looking information should be targeted at the sophisticated investor or all investors, terms of debate shifted from the 1970s to the 1990s. Early on, supporters argued that managers should provide forecasts to sophisticated
investors outside formal SEC filings.38 While this approach dominated for two decades, the SEC *803 reversed course in the late 1990s by adopting Regulation FD to require that guidance provided to one investor must be provided simultaneously
to the public at large.39 This step completed the circle that the forward-looking disclosure regime inaugurated: (1) managers were redirected from accounting to finance and (2) all investors were functionally brought inside the enterprise by mandates that managers supply finance-oriented information.
Regulatory efforts ensuing from the forward-looking disclosure debate thus resolved numerous contentious questions. The resulting regime is mostly mandatory; it requires good faith and reasonable grounds for predictions; and makes the same predictions available to all investors whether sophisticated or not. Never resolved in this debate on the merits, however, is
the argument of opponents that forward-looking information is inherently unreliable. It remains true, after all, that no one is clairvoyant. The late 1990s and early 2000s also show that even so-called sophisticated investors are not immune from being fooled by managerial manipulations.
Accordingly, the SEC's early cautious regulatory response to market demand for futuristic information showed prudence. In fact, the reality that forward-looking information is inherently unreliable manifested immediately upon implementation of the forward-looking disclosure regime. Managers would forecast various business developments for market participants eager to clarify their own cloudy crystal balls. When these judgments turned out differently, plaintiffs' lawyers sued. This litigation showed symptoms of the underlying reality that forward-looking information is inherently unreliable. Rather than ever confronting this reality squarely, the regulatory regime focused on these symptoms by designing devices to address associated
litigation abuses.40
Safe harbor provisions are the leading device to address litigation abuses associated with forward-looking *804 information. These insulate issuers from liability in private actions when forward-looking statements are accompanied by cautionary language underscoring their basic unreliability. The SEC, Congress, and courts all participated in developing related
doctrines.41 The judiciary used the so-called bespeaks caution doctrine.42 It provided a case-by-case evaluation of whether forward-looking information was accompanied by sufficient cautionary language to alert a reasonable investor to the information's tentative quality. The SEC and Congress essentially codified this doctrine.
While some evidence indicates that the forward-looking disclosure system enhanced overall quality of information and its
interpretation,43 drawbacks have appeared.44 Managers forecast future earnings and equip analysts to do so; analysts then widely disseminate *805expectations across the marketplace; this creates pressure to meet these expectations. (When a company sold five widgets, it created a historical record; when managers say they expect to sell six and hope to sell seven, they create expectations and hopes.) Managers who fail to meet expectations and hopes are punished severely. This, in turn,
increases pressure to enhance reports of numerical history to conform to the prognosis previously painted.45 The result is often escalating accounting pressure to repaint history to conform to increasingly out-of-reach prognosis.
These effects are not met by regulatory efforts to police litigation abuse arising from prognostication. More problematic than second-guessing by litigation is the first-order stage on which this information is demanded and supplied. But this problem, likewise, has never been addressed. Demand for forward-looking information is demand for what is inherently unreliable. Supplying the information sets markers that are bound to result in disappointment. Specifying the targets creates pressure to
meet them, and when fundamental business strategies cannot do so, accounting massage becomes more tempting.46 In the extreme, finance destroys accounting.
*806 Not only has inadequate attention been paid to this feature of the contemporary financial reporting environment,47 the safe-harbor mechanisms used to address the identified litigation problem appear equally inadequate to their task. What is needed is a policy to address both challenges. This must constrain undue second-guessing litigation and limit forecasting likely to pressure managers to report accounting figures in light of those estimates rather than based on subsequent business reality.
IV. Metastasizing
Despite limitations of peering into the future using forward-looking disclosure, reforms push further in that direction. This shows not only potential misdiagnosis of the disease and questionable prescription, it manifests the depth and ubiquity of modern culture's preoccupation with the future. Two reforms highlight this: movement towards a continuous disclosure system and development of an early warning system provided by auditors based on the quality of an entity's internal control over financial reporting.
The apotheosis of modernity's future obsession in securities markets and law is the pressure for a continuous disclosure system.
This is a concept designed to require real-time display of various financial developments.48 Long sought by market participants and recently encouraged by the SEC, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) adds force to this movement by directing the SEC to adopt rules to hasten the *807 phenomenon. Under SOX, companies must disclose publicly, on a “rapid and current basis,”all material changes in their financial condition or operations, including trends providing qualitative information and graphic
presentations.49
SOX uses the word “disclose,” disguising its more profound shift in market appetite and regulatory philosophy--likewise disguising latent dangers. The innovation of the original federal securities laws was a move towards disclosure. Mandatory
disclosure, Louis Brandeis famously quipped, is the best disinfectant.50 Current pressures for real-time display go beyond disclosure. They move towards transparency. Again, this shift reflects finance-driven pressure towards real-time accounting, presenting enormous challenges to basic accounting concepts such as allocation of economic events to multiple fiscal periods. Accompanying these pressures, moreover, are appetites for systems and research designed to provide a continuous auditing
function, despite numerous recognized obstacles to this undertaking.51
Contemporary calls for heightened transparency across society often appear as unbounded virtues.52 But *808 good reasons appear to doubt this proposition.53 Otto van Bismarck reportedly cautioned that, “[i]f you like laws and sausages, you should
never watch either one being made.”54 The same is true for those who like financial reports. Consider how managers are to develop this continuous information-display.
On a daily basis, companies generate internal financial data, such as sales, accounts receivable balances and charge-offs, inventory levels and obsolescence. These financial data reveal trends. These trends can amount, on a temporary basis, to material changes in financial condition and operation. Mandatory display of these trends is functionally equivalent to mandatory transparency of business operations on a daily basis. It opens for view daily financial recording, not periodic financial reporting. This echoes the process associated with the dawn of forward-looking disclosure era of managers generating finance data and distributing it to investors.
Besides impairing the efficacy of accounting's fiscal-period assumption, daily changes are not indicative of quarterly or annual aggregates. This information is most useful to managers during an accounting/operating period. It equips them to make course corrections, taking such steps as strengthening sales efforts in lagging segments or improving collection practices when receivable charge-offs rise in certain customer bases. The information is useful to redirect trends and to manage the materiality and direction of financial condition and operation.
*809 Whether corrections succeed takes more than a few days of dashboard data to sort out. Premature disclosure of adverse trends may sustain them, disabling managerial corrections. If sales are seen flat in one region, customers in adjacent regions may switch to competitor products; if receivables collections are seen slowing among some customers, other customers may join the laggards. Investors and other corporate constituents are likely better served by giving management time and leeway to
make improvements, not respond to them on a daily basis.55
If the new rules under SOX only tinker with mandatory continuous display, consider a proposal for pure transparency made by
a senior SEC official.56 It prescribes changing the existing financial reporting environment using two devices: (1) requiring companies to report real-time bookkeeping information on publicly-accessible websites (including real-time journal entries, ledger summaries, monthly aggregations and so on) and (2) requiring management to respond publicly to questions concerning this information.
The theory of this substantive transparency (not mere disclosure) is to equip investors having requisite interest and resources to perform their own financial statement audits of companies, or engage their own auditor to do so. Apart from numerous other
practical problems,57 it is *810 doubtful that such deep transparency is in the best interests of corporations or investors.58 But the proposal shows enduring reform-based emphasis on finance (transparency) not accounting (disclosure).
The second reform highlighting the urge for transparency concerns auditing. In traditional financial statement audits, auditors speak as of a moment in time about financial statements prepared as of a prior date and for a prior period, providing hard facts. These are attestations of numerical history. Auditors are financial archeologists. They provide three paragraphs of standardized text to express unqualified opinions, and offer a few additional sentences in other situations.
Reforms implemented in mid-2004 vastly expand the auditor's task, transforming it from financial archeologist of numerical history into a forecaster of financial reporting. The reform requires auditors to test and opine upon a company's internal control
over financial reporting.59 Though based upon a current examination and providing an opinion about control maintenance during a past accounting period, it is quintessentially about the future--the auditing standard describes itself as creating an “early
warning system.”60
The key trigger requiring auditor forward-looking disclosure is the existence of a material weakness in such control. The concept of material weakness is forward-looking, defined as risk that material misstatements will not be detected or prevented in the future. The auditing *811 standard requires auditors to describe material weaknesses along with their actual or potential future effects on the company's financial statements.
The early warning system's likely effectiveness must be evaluated by comparison to the kindred system of forward-looking disclosure in place for business substance since the 1970s. At a minimum, to make this system meaningful will likely require the
same kinds of safe-harbor concepts developed for the forward-looking disclosure system.61 Even those, of course, produced imperfections in the relation between forward narrative and eventual reporting of numerical history. Analogous challenges appear in this control audit innovation.
Nevertheless, a virtue appears in this otherwise indulgent futurism. By insisting on auditor assessment of control, the reform rejects finance theory's implications that accounting controls are of limited utility. This rejection is a useful antidote to widespread preoccupation with the future creating demand for and supply of phony financial forecasting. On balance, however, the reform amounts to one step forward and one step backward.
V. Cures
Numerous policies might address the problem of forward-looking information. This essay identifies two such policies. One policy is legal: redefining the disclosure standards applied to managers. The other policy is business-related: redefining how financial figures are reported. Both address the inherent unreliability of forecasts, which the forward-looking disclosure regime never has.
The first policy cure operates within the existing forward-looking disclosure regime. Rather than require, permit, or encourage managers to provide forecasts of earnings (or other measures), the regime could simply require managers to disclose material
risks of future *812 adversity.62 The purpose of this regime would be to provide a basis for investors to gauge the degree to which a company's numerical history is useful as a guide to probable future performance. Inherently unreliable estimates of future performance would not be required, permitted or encouraged.
The second policy cure prescription operates within an altered framework for accounting. It takes one lesson from finance. Accounting should not use a single figure for every financial statement item (aggregating underlying transactions). In many cases, only estimates are reasonably possible, even for events and circumstances that have occurred. The appropriate amount of reserves for doubtful accounts and the methods for measuring inventory and cost of inventory sold are not capable of definitive
measurement. Yet accounting has always imposed this result.(Managers cited this as one reason for using pro forma figures--although these figures also often pinpointed single figures.)
The solution is straightforward. Accounting figures should be reported in ranges, not single amounts. Thus, accounting should abandon the conceit of computing a single number for earnings and a single number for owners' equity and instead report a range of reasonable figures for each. This would more fairly reflect the fundamental challenges and limits of accounting, a system tied to numbers and history yet still capable only of providing ranges with any reliability. After all, when used to aggregate large numbers of measurements, the reliability of single discrete measurements degrades. The need for such a change is increasingly important as contemporary events--both scandals and reform--increasingly push accounting towards the future.
Conclusion
Finance--and the digitized-information age--demand from accounting what it cannot reliably deliver. Reforms *813 directed at enhancing the orientation toward the future not only miss the points but exacerbate what they miss. Feeding the beast of information-hungry finance culture must be accompanied with training the beast. Mankind has long dreamt of knowing tomorrow's news today and contemporary culture whets that appetite because it seems so much more within reach. In accounting
and securities regulation, however, hunger for tomorrow's news today can be perilous.63 Finance and accounting must work together to overcome these tensions--and the limits of each discipline. Lawyers involved in formulating federal securities disclosure policy would benefit by reconsideration of market fascination with the future; this essay scratches the surface.
Footnotes
d1Professor of Law & Business, Libby Scholar and Academic Dean, Boston College Law School. Copyright 2005. Thanks to Bert
Westbrook for comments and for inviting me to contribute this piece to the innovative Buffalo Law Review essay format he helped to pioneer.
1See generally Ronald J. Gilson & Reinier H. Kraakman, The Mechanisms of Market Efficiency, 70 Va. L. Rev. 549 (1984) (still the leading statement by leading corporate law scholars on market efficiency despite many critiques).
2Cf. Louis Lowenstein, Efficient Market Theory: Let the Punishment Fit the Crime, 51 Wash. & Lee L. Rev. 925 (1994).
3Cf. David Downes & Thomas R. Dyckman, A Critical Look at the Efficient Market Empirical Research Literature as it Relates to Accounting Information, 48 Acct. Rev. 300 (1973).
4 A leading columnist for the Wall Street Journal argues that it doesn't matter whether one accounts for stock options or not, for the
market will figure out their significance without regard to accounting.
In the real world, any information, as long as it's deemed relevant, will be processed into the mill for pricing securities. It doesn't matter whether the data is computed into the income statement or appears in a footnote or is shouted up and down Wall Street by
a man in a tutu.
Holman W. Jenkins Jr., Much Ado About Stock Options, Wall St. J., Apr. 3, 2002, at A23. Tell that to Enron shareholders.
5See George Mundstock, The Trouble with FASB, 28 N.C. J. Int'l L. & Com. Reg. 813, 819 (2003) (“Under the efficient market analysis, no regulation of accounting is needed”).
6The chief contribution of this concept to legal literature was made in respect of criticism of the classical theory of contracts which
appeared to hold a conceit that contract formation achieved the reduction of future events to present control. See generally Ian R.
Macneil, Restatement (Second) of Contracts and Presentiation, 60 Va. L. Rev. 589 (1974). Professor Macneil explained the concept: Presentiation is a way of looking at things in which a person perceives the effect of the future on the present. It is a recognition that the course of the future is so unalterably bound by present conditions that the future has been brought effectively into the present so that it may be dealt with just as if it were in fact the present. Thus, the presentiation of a transaction involves restricting its expected future effects to those defined in the present, i.e., at the inception of the transaction.
Ian R. Macneil, Contracts: Adjustment of Long-Term Economic Relations Under Classical, Neoclassical, and Relational Contract Law, 72 Nw. U. L. Rev. 854, 863 (1978) (footnote omitted).
78 The Oxford English Dictionary 1306 (1933).
8See Stanley Siegel, The Coming Revolution in Accounting: The Emergence of Fair Value as the Fundamental Principle of GAAP, 42
Wayne L. Rev. 1839 (1996); see also G. A. Swanson, Accountability and the Drift Towards “Fair Value Measurement”, Am. Acct.
Ass'n 2004 Mid-Atlantic Region Meeting Paper (Apr. 6, 2004), https://www.doczj.com/doc/067205168.html,/abstract_id=487043. See generally Using Cash Flow Info. and Present Value in Accounting Measurements, Statement of Financial Accounting Concepts No. 7 (Fin. Accounting Standards Bd. 2000).
9See Statement of Cash Flows, Statement of Financial Accounting Standards No. 95, § 27 (Fin. Accounting Standards Bd. 1987); see
also Lawrence A. Cunningham, Semiotics, Hermeneutics, and Cash: An Essay on the True and Fair View, 28 N.C. J. Int'l L. & Com.
Reg. 893 (2003) (providing historical perspective).
10Pablo Fernández, Cash Flow is a Fact. Net Income is Just an Opinion (Sept. 2002), https://www.doczj.com/doc/067205168.html,/abstract_id=330540. A
famous contemporary debate in accounting theory evaluates whether valuation according to earnings or cash flows is superior.
Compare Stephen H. Penman, On Comparing Cash Flow and Accrual Accounting Models for Use in Equity Valuation, 18 Contemp.
Acct. Res. 681 (2001) (the case that accounting matters and that accrual-earnings based valuation models are superior to cash flow models), with Russell J. Lundholm & Terrence B. O'Keefe, On Comparing Residual Income and Discounted Cash Flow Models of Equity Valuation: A Response to Penman 2001, 18 Contemp. Acct. Res. 693 (2001) (when applied correctly, valuation models using earnings and cash flow should yield identical estimates).
11See Gopal V. Krishnan & James A. Largay III, The Predictive Ability of Direct Method Cash Flow Information, 27 J. Bus. Fin. &
Acct. 215 (2000).
12See, e.g., Zvi Bodie & Robert C. Merton, Finance (2000); William W. Bratton, Corporate Finance: Cases and Materials (5th ed. 2003);
Richard A. Brealey & Stewart C. Myers, Principles of Corporate Finance (4th ed. 1991); cf. Bruce C.N. Greenwald et al., Value Investing (2001) (the case against making discounted cash flow analysis the dominant valuation method in favor of emphasizing asset-based valuation or earnings-based valuation).
13Cf. Weinberger v. UOP, Inc., 457 A.2d 701 (Del. 1983) (abandoning previous business valuation framework reliant upon a weighted
average of value estimated using assets, earnings and market price, in favor of framework permitting all generally recognized valuation methods, the ascendant one of which was DCF).
14See M.G. Bancorporation v. Le Beau, 737 A.2d 513, 523 (Del. 1999); World Bank, Report to the Development Committee and
Guidelines on the Treatment of Foreign Direct Investment, 31 I.L.M. 1379, 1383 (1992).
15Common short-hands include earnings before interest and taxes (EBIT), earnings before interest, taxes and depreciation (EBITD),
and earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA). In each case, adjustments are made by subtracting from resulting cash-flow figures estimates of future required reinvestments in the business for capital expenditures.
16In fact, FASB-ordained GAAP prohibits providing cash flow per share figures in a set of general purpose financial statements. See
Statement of Cash Flows, Statement of Fin. Accounting Standards No. 95, § 33 (Fin. Accounting Standards Bd. 1987).
17See Erik Lie & Heidi J. Lie, Multiples Used to Estimate Corporate Value, Fin. Analysts J., March/April 2002, at 44.
18See Lawrence A. Cunningham, Introductory Accounting, Finance and Auditing for Lawyers 261-88 (2004) (discussion of valuation
techniques, including DCF).
19 A dramatic large-scale example is the telecommunication industry's capitalizing of line costs that kept their stock prices high; they
plummeted when it became clear these should have been expensed. See Lawrence A. Cunningham, The Sarbanes-Oxley Yawn: Heavy Rhetoric, Light Reform (And It Might Just Work), 35 Conn. L. Rev. 915 (2003) (providing a description of the largest frauds of the late 1990s and early 2000s, including those in the telecommunication industry). Another example is how investors responded to different accounting for acquisitions under the now-repealed purchase-pooling distinction. See Patrick E. Hopkins, Richard W.
Houston & Michael F. Peters, Purchase, Pooling and Equity Analysts' Valuation Judgments, 75 Acct. Rev. 257 (2000).
20See Lawrence A. Cunningham, Behavioral Finance and Investor Governance, 59 Wash. & Lee L. Rev. 767 (2002) (critique of efficient
market hypothesis using noise theory and prospect theory); Lawrence A. Cunningham, From Random Walks to Chaotic Crashes: The Linear Genealogy of the Efficient Capital Market Hypothesis, 62 Geo. Wash. L. Rev. 546 (1994) [hereinafter Cunningham, Random Walks] (critique of efficient market hypothesis using chaos theory and noise theory).
21Numerous other examples appear. Consider America Online's (AOL) decision whether to capitalize or expense disbursements
to build its Internet subscriber database. AOL capitalized these disbursements and the market price reflected this decision. And when AOL changed under pressure to expense these costs, the market price reflected this change. Consider the general practice in the telecommunication industry of treating capacity swaps as asset and revenue transactions rather than as liability and expense transactions. See In re America Online, Inc., Accounting and Auditing Enforcement Release No. 1258, Litigation No. 16522 (May 15, 2000).
22The cardinal rule of economic heforecasting ... holds that a model's predictive power is the only relevant test of its validity, not the
assumptions underlying it. See Milton Friedman, The Methodology of Positive Economics, in Essays in Positive Economics 3, 23 (1953) (stating that a “theory cannot be tested by the ‘realism’ of its ‘assumptions”’); see also Mark Blaug, The Methodology of Economics: Or How Economists Explain 104 (6th ed. 1985) (explaining Friedman's thesis to be that the realism of the assumptions underlying a theory is irrelevant and that models are to be judged by their predictive power).
Cunningham, Random Walks, supra note 20, at 559 n.60
23See Robert J. Shiller, Irrational Exuberance (2000); see also Andrei Shleifer, Inefficient Markets (2000).
24Cf. In re BT Securities Corporation, 58 S.E.C. Docket 1145 (Dec. 22, 1994), reprinted in Lawrence E. Mitchell et al., Corporate
Finance and Governance 286-93 (2d ed. 1996). In this matter, tape recordings of a derivatives trader captured him describing how undisclosed losses on a client account would be made up when the market moved favorably, as follows: “I mean we told him $8.1 million when the real number was 14. So now if the real number is 16, we'll tell him that it is 11. You know, just slowly chip away at that differential between what it really is and what we're telling him.” Mitchell, supra, at 280.
25See Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, §§ 401(b), 501, 15 U.S.C. §§ 7261(b), 78o-6 (Supp. II 2002) (discussing pro forma reporting and
securities analysts respectively); see also SEC Regulation G, 17 C.F.R. pt. 244 (2005) (implementing limitations on non-GAAP disclosure under the Sarbanes-Oxley Act).
26See Disclosure of Projections of Future Economic Performance, Securities Act Release No. 5362, 38 Fed. Reg. 7220 (Feb. 2, 1973);
Exchange Act Release No. 9984, [1972-1973 Transfer Binder] Fed. Sec. L. Rep. (CCH) P 79,211, at 82,666 (Feb. 2, 1973) (“It has been the Commission's long standing policy generally not to permit projections to be included in ... reports filed with the Commission”); Guides for Disclosure of Projections for Future Economic Performance, Securities Act Release No. 5992, [1978 Transfer Binder] Fed. Sec. L. Rep. (CCH) P 81,756, at 81,037 (Nov. 7,1978) (authorizing forward-looking disclosure).
27 E.g., Homer Kripke, Can the SEC Make Disclosure Policy Meaningful?, J. Portfolio Mgmt., Summer 1976, at 32, 35-37.
28See SEC Regulation S-K, 17 C.F.R. § 229.10(b) (2005) (“The Commission encourages the use ... of management's projections of
future economic performance that have a reasonable basis and are presented in an appropriate format.”); 17 C.F.R. § 229.303(a)(3) (ii) (mandating disclosure of “any known trends or uncertainties that [management] reasonably expects will have a material favorable or unfavorable impact on ... revenues or income from continuing operations”).
2917 C.F.R. § 229.303(a)(3)(ii). See generally Quinton F. Seamons, Requirements and Pitfalls of MD&A Disclosure, 25 Sec. Reg.
L.J. 239 (1997).
30See John C. Burton, Elephants, Flexibility and the Financial Accounting Standards Board, Bus. Law., Mar. 1974, at 151; see also
Homer Kripke, The SEC, the Accountants, Some Myths and Some Realities, 45 N.Y.U. L. Rev. 1151 (1970).
31See Harry Heller, Disclosure Requirements Under Federal Securities Regulations, 16 Bus. Law. 300, 307 (1961) (despite reality that
investment value is a function of future financial performance, managers are not clairvoyant and management attempts at forecasting are “almost invariably ... misleading because they suggest to the investor a competence and authority which in fact does not exist.”).
32See Joel Seligman, Transformation of Wall Street 611 (Northeastern Univ. Press 1995) (1982).
33See Kripke, supra note 30.
34See generally Burton, supra note 30.
35See Kripke, supra note 30, at 1198-99.
36See Seligman, supra note 32, at 611 (SEC's 1982 adoption of Item 303 of Regulation S-K concerning MD&A and forward-looking
information “is the key part of the evolution of the Commission's approach to accounting from an emphasis on ‘hard fact’ to its present emphasis on ‘soft’ or predictive information. It is a comprehensive disclosure item.”).
37See id. at 559-61.
38Compare Kripke, supra note 30 (objecting to extant practice that SEC position perpetuated of “differential disclosure,” meaning
professionals receiving projections in presentations, conference calls and press releases the public at large did not receive), with Burton, supra note 30 (urging reorientation of SEC target audience from “the stockholder without clout, if you will” and “sophisticated investors and professional analysts through whom information would be filtered down to less sophisticated investors and their brokers”).
39See Securities and Exchange Commission, Selective Disclosure and Insider Trading, 65 Fed. Reg. 51,716 (Aug. 24, 2000).
40See Seligman, supra note 32, at 559-60 (quoting SEC official and leading securities lawyer of the period, A. A. Sommer, as saying
that litigation aspects were the “biggest headache” associated with the new forward-looking disclosure regime).
41See Securities Act Rule 175, 17 C.F.R. 230.175 (1933); Securities Exchange Act Rule 3b-6, 17 C.F.R. 240.3b-6 (1934); Private
Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, 15 U.S.C. § 77z-2 (Section 27A of the 1933 Act) and 15 U.S.C. § 78u-5(c) (Section 21E of the 1934 Act) (2000). For a concise summary of the intricate provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act addressing the relationship between its safe-harbor provisions and the kinds of forward-looking information that are required, encouraged, and permitted, see Dale E. Barnes, Jr. & Karen Kennard, Greater Expectations: Risk Disclosure Under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995--An Update, 2 Stan. J.L. Bus. & Fin. 331, 335-54 (1996).
42See, e.g., In re Donald J. Trump Casino Sec. Litig., 7 F.3d 357 (3d Cir. 1993); Mayer v. Mylod, 988 F.2d 635 (6th Cir. 1993);
Rubenstein v. Collins, 20 F.3d 164, 167 (5th Cir. 1994); Harris v. Ivax Corp., 182 F.3d 799 (11th Cir. 1999) (also interpreting Congressional and SEC safe harbor provisions). See generally Donald C. Langevoort, Disclosures that “Bespeak Caution,” 49 Bus.
Law. 481 (1994).
43See John C. Coffee, Jr. & Joel Seligman, Securities Regulation 6 (9th ed. 2003) (citing Artyom Durnev et al., Law, Share Price
Accuracy and Economic Performance: The New Evidence, Presentation at the American Law and Economics Association Annual Meeting (May 12, 2001) (examining impact of mandatory forward-looking disclosure in MD&A on share prices).
44See Mark S. Croft, MD&A: The Tightrope of Disclosure, 45 S.C. L. Rev. 477 (1994) (reviewing history of forward-looking disclosure
regime and examining litigation arising under it). For a general assessment and prescriptions to reform the forward-looking disclosure regime not using safe-harbors but through formal SEC release articulating its parameters and furnishing detailed guidance, see Joel Seligman, The SEC's Unfinished Soft Information Revolution, 63 Fordham L. Rev. 1953 (1995). See also Suzanne J. Romajas, Note, The Duty to Disclose Forward-Looking Information: A Look at the Future of MD&A, 61 Fordham L. Rev. S245 (1993) (providing
a more optimistic assessment).
45In theory, ex ante awareness of future punishment for disappointed expectations should constrain managerial optimism; in practice,
however, this constraint is weak. See Joseph Fuller & Michael C. Jensen, Just Say No to Wall Street: Putting A Stop to the Earnings Game, 14 J. Applied Corp. Fin. 41 (2002).
46Cf. Donald C. Langevoort, Organized Illusions: A Behavioral Theory of Why Corporations Mislead Stock Market Investors (and
Cause other Social Harms), 146 U. Pa. L. Rev. 101 (1997).
Forward-looking disclosure ... must often be made with less-than-complete confidence of their accuracy, with the nagging sense that with more time, doubts about data quality might naturally diminish. From time to time, senior executives will discover, much too late, that the truth is indeed quite different from what they have been led to believe. To be sure, senior executives cannot explicitly acknowledge this. Part of the essential dramaturgical role of senior managers is to communicate confidence and control over their environment, and ... many management theorists believe that effective corporate disclosure must reflect a comparable level
of confidence in control, if not performance, by the senior management group. Thus, even putting aside the possibility that those top managers have their own selfish reasons to distort, there is a substantial risk of a mismatch between what they say andwhat, once a retrospective look at what all those in the organization actually knew or sensed is undertaken, was “known” by others in the firm.
Id. at 125. Mismatch risk poses two challenges: second-guessing litigation, which the securities law framework has addressed, and pressure to finesse a match, to which inadequate attention appears to be paid. See G. Mitu Gulati, Jeffrey J. Rachlinski & Donald
C. Langevoort, Fraud by Hindsight, 98 Nw. L. Rev. 773 (2004) (examining judicial responses to disappointed expectations arising
from prognosis).
47Debate concerning the merits of a forward-looking disclosure system was intense in the 1970s, see supra note 46 and accompanying
text, but thereafter cooled and the system's role in the financial frauds of the late 1990s and early 2000s was neglected.
48See Donald C. Langevoort, Information Technology and the Structure of Securities Regulation, 98 Harv. L. Rev. 747 (1985); Dale
Arthur Oseterle, The Inexorable March Toward a Continuous Disclosure Requirement for Publicly Traded Corporations: “Are We There Yet” ?, 20 Cardozo L Rev. 135 (1998); see also Erick D. Prohs, Note, Periodic Reporting: A Relic of the Past?, 27 J. Corp.
L. 481 (2002).
49Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 § 409, 15 U.S.C. § 78m(l) (Supp. II 2002).
50See Louis D. Brandeis, Other People's Money and How the Bankers Use It 92 (1914) (“Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants;
electric light the most efficient policeman.”).
51See Vernon J. Richardson & Susan W. Scholz, Corporate Reporting and the Internet: Vision, Reality, and Intervening Obstacles,
11 Pac. Acct. Rev. (Dec. 1999/Jan. 2000). Numerous conferences on the concept of continuous auditing have been staged in recent
years. See Rutgers Accounting Website, https://www.doczj.com/doc/067205168.html, (last visited Nov. 8, 2005) (listing the conferences that have been held on continuous auditing and reporting).
52See Louis Lowenstein, Financial Transparency and Corporate Governance: You Manage What You Measure, 96 Colum. L. Rev.
1335 (1996).
Transparency is an eleventh commandment of American life generally, not just of financial markets. We insist on open hearings all through government; we open up to public scrutiny under the Freedom of Information Act the records that elsewhere would be kept confidential; we relentlessly pursue the tax returns and business dealings of almost anyone seeking high public office. We do all this as part of the public's unquestioned (if sometimes exaggerated) “right to know.” It comes as no surprise that what is so ubiquitous in our society should affect the financial reporting of the country's major businesses.
Id. at 1342. Professor Lowenstein's comments addressed the traditional disclosure system, not the kind of transparency digitization injects. Calls for transparency routinely are heard concerning business, government, international agencies, military operations, diplomatic corps, academia and other organization types. See generally Something to Believe in: Creating Trust and Hope in Organisations (Rupesh A. Shah et al. eds., 2003); Cynthia A. Williams, The Securities and Exchange Commission and Corporate Social Transparency, 112 Harv. L. Rev. 1197 (1999).
53For a careful assessment of the appeal and limits of transparency, using the example of corporate voting in the mutual fund industry,
see Alan R. Palmiter, Mutual Fund Voting of Portfolio Shares: Why Not Disclose?, 23 Cardozo L. Rev. 1419 (2001-2002).
54The Oxford Companion to American Law vii (Kermit L. Hall ed., Oxford Univ. Press 2002).
55 E.g., Edmund W. Kitch, The Theory and Practice of Securities Disclosure, 61 Brook. L. Rev. 763 (1995) (general analysis concluding
with an example of how disclosure concerning Caterpillar Inc. subsidiary in politically-unstable Brazil could have exacerbated political risks); Jonathan R. Macey & Geoffrey P. Miller, Good Finance, Bad Economics: An Analysis of the Fraud-on-the-Market Theory, 42 Stan. L. Rev. 1059 (1990) (explaining how managerial withholding of information may benefit investors rather than harm them as often assumed).
56See Peter K.M. Chan, Breaking the Market's Dependence on Independence: An Alternative to the ‘Independent’ Outside Auditor, 9
Fordham J. Corp. & Fin. L. 347 (2004). When Peter Chan's article was published, he was Associate Regional Director, Enforcement, in the SEC's Midwest Regional Office. (His views, of course, do not necessarily represent those of the SEC.)
57As examples: (1) supplied information is raw bookkeeping data and limited questionnaire access to management; neither investors
nor their auditors have access to a company's system of internal control, audit committees, walk-through exercises, or other essential
resources used in traditional auditing and (2) the result would require enormous investor coordination and/or result in numerous separate investor-audits, generating wasteful duplicative costs.
58See Udo C. Braendle & Juergen Noll, A Fig Leaf for the Naked Corporation? (2004), https://www.doczj.com/doc/067205168.html,/paper.taf?
abstract_id=523102 (making the specific case against utter transparency in corporate financial reporting). See generally Troy A.
Paredes, Blinded by the Light: Information Overload and its Consequences for Securities Regulation, 81 Wash. U. L.Q. 417 (2003) (expressing more general reservations); Elizabeth Boros, Corporations Online, 19 Company & Sec. L. 492 (2001) (survey of 100 large Australian companies documents grounds for skepticism as to using corporate Web sites to deliver “universal real-time free access to continuous disclosure information”). This concern is wholly apart from protecting proprietary information that would necessarily be covered by such a proposal. See Chan, supra note 56, at 391-92.
59An Audit of Internal Control over Financial Reporting Performed in Conjunction with an Audit of Financial Statements, Auditing Standard No. 2 (Pub. Co. Accounting Oversight Bd. 2004).
60Id. P 6.
61See Lawrence A. Cunningham, Facilitating Auditing's New Early Warning System: Control Disclosure, Auditor Liability and Safe Harbors, 55 Hastings L.J. 1449 (2004).
62See Donald C. Langevoort, Managing the “Expectations Gap” in Investor Protection: The SEC and the Post-Enron Reform Agenda,
48 Vill. L. Rev. 1139, 1154-56 (2003) (prescribing a complete overhaul of MD&A to provide “what investors really want and
need [which] is a warning of material future risks ... [and] discussion of their probability and magnitude from management's perspective ....”).
63Cf. Chiarella v. United States, 445 U.S. 222 (1980) (insider trading conviction arising from Wall Street Journal columnist privately and criminally sharing tomorrow's news today).
53 BFLR 789
End of Document? 2015 Thomson Reuters. No claim to original U.S. Government Works.
财务专业术语中英文对照表 英文中文说明 Account Accounting system 会计系统 American Accounting Association 美国会计协会 American Institute of CPAs 美国注册会计师协会 Audit 审计 Balance sheet 资产负债表 Bookkeepking 簿记 Cash flow prospects 现金流量预测 Certificate in Internal Auditing 部审计证书 Certificate in Management Accounting 管理会计证书 Certificate Public Accountant注册会计师 Cost accounting 成本会计 External users 外部使用者 Financial accounting 财务会计 Financial Accounting Standards Board 财务会计准则委员会 Financial forecast 财务预测 Generally accepted accounting principles 公认会计原则 General-purpose information 通用目的信息 Government Accounting Office 政府会计办公室 Income statement 损益表 Institute of Internal Auditors 部审计师协会 Institute of Management Accountants 管理会计师协会 Integrity 整合性 Internal auditing 部审计 Internal control structure 部控制结构 Internal Revenue Service 国收入署 Internal users部使用者 Management accounting 管理会计 Return of investment 投资回报 Return on investment 投资报酬 Securities and Exchange Commission 证券交易委员会
各种花卉的英文名 iris蝴蝶花 cockscomb鸡冠花 honeysuckle金银花chrysanthemum菊花 carnation康乃馨 orchid兰花 canna美人蕉 jasmine茉莉花 daffodil水仙花 peony牡丹 begonia秋海棠 cactus仙人掌 christmas flower圣诞花/一品红poppy罂粟 tulip郁金香 chinese rose月季 violet紫罗兰 peach flower桃花 aloe芦荟 mimosa含羞草 dandelion蒲公英
plum bolssom梅花中国水仙 new year lily 石榴 pomegranate 月桂victor's laurel 报春花 polyanthus 木棉 cotton tree 紫丁香 lilac 吊钟 lady's eardrops 紫荆 Chinese redbud 百合 lily 紫罗兰 wall flower 桃花 peach 紫藤 wisteria 杜鹃 azalea 铃兰 lily-of-the-valley 牡丹 tree peony 银杏 ginkgo 芍药 peony 蝴蝶兰 moth orchid 辛夷 violet magnolia 蟹爪仙人掌 Christmas cactus 玫瑰 rose 郁金香 tulip
茶花 common camellia 千日红 common globe-amaranth 非洲堇 African violet 栀子花 cape jasmine 木槿 rose of Sharon 风信子 hyacinth 百子莲 African lily 牵牛花 morning glory 君子兰 kefir lily 荷包花 lady's pocketbook 含笑花 banana shrub 非洲菊 African daisy 含羞草 sensitive plant 茉莉 Arabian jasmine 猪笼草 pitcher plant 凌霄花 creeper 树兰 orchid tree 康乃馨coronation 鸡冠花 cockscomb 荷花lotus 鸢萝 cypress vine 菩提 botree
财会常见名词英汉对照表 （1）会计与会计理论 会计accounting 决策人Decision Maker 投资人Investor 股东Shareholder 债权人Creditor 财务会计Financial Accounting 管理会计Management Accounting 成本会计Cost Accounting 私业会计Private Accounting 公众会计Public Accounting 注册会计师CPA Certified Public Accountant 国际会计准则委员会IASC 美国注册会计师协会AICPA 财务会计准则委员会FASB 管理会计协会IMA 美国会计学会AAA 税务稽核署IRS 独资企业Proprietorship 合伙人企业Partnership 公司Corporation
会计目标Accounting Objectives 会计假设Accounting Assumptions 会计要素Accounting Elements 会计原则Accounting Principles 会计实务过程Accounting Procedures 财务报表Financial Statements 财务分析Financial Analysis 会计主体假设Separate-entity Assumption 货币计量假设Unit-of-measure Assumption 持续经营假设Continuity(Going-concern) Assumption 会计分期假设Time-period Assumption 资产Asset 负债Liability 业主权益Owner's Equity 收入Revenue 费用Expense 收益Income 亏损Loss 历史成本原则Cost Principle 收入实现原则Revenue Principle 配比原则Matching Principle 全面披露原则Full-disclosure (Reporting) Principle
植物花卉中英文对照、花卉英文名大全 金橘－－－－－－－－－－－－－－kumquat 米仔兰(米兰）－－－－－－－－－ milan tree 变叶木－－－－－－－－－－－－－croton 一品红－－－－－－－－－－－－－poinsettia 扶桑－－－－－－－－－－－－－－Chinese hibiscus 吊灯花－－－－－－－－－－－－－fringed hibiscus 马拉巴栗（发财树)－－－－－－－ Guiana chestnut 山茶－－－－－－－－－－－－－－camellia 云南山茶－－－－－－－－－－－－Yunnan camellia 金花茶－－－－－－－－－－－－－golden camellia 瑞香－－－－－－－－－－－－－－daphne 结香－－－－－－－－－－－－－－paper bush 倒挂金钟－－－－－－－－－－－－fuchsia 八角金盘－－－－－－－－－－－－Japan fatsia 常春藤－－－－－－－－－－－－－ivy 鹅掌柴－－－－－－－－－－－－－umbrella tree 杜鹃花－－－－－－－－－－－－－rhododendron 茉莉花－－－－－－－－－－－－－jasmine 桂花－－－－－－－－－－－－－－sweet osmanthus 夹竹桃－－－－－－－－－－－－－sweet-scented oleander 黄花夹竹桃－－－－－－－－－－－lucky-nut-thevetia 鸡蛋花－－－－－－－－－－－－－frangipani 龙吐珠－－－－－－－－－－－－－bleeding-heart glorybower 夜香树（木本夜来香）－－－－－－night jasmine 鸳鸯茉莉－－－－－－－－－－－－broadleaf raintree 栀子花－－－－－－－－－－－－－cape jasmine 蝴蝶兰－－－－－－－－－－－－－moth orchid 卡特兰－－－－－－－－－－－－－cattleya 石斛－－－－－－－－－－－－－－dendrobium 兜兰－－－－－－－－－－－－－－lady slipper 兰花－－－－－－－－－－－－－－orchid 春兰－－－－－－－－－－－－－－goering cymbidium
会计专业专业术语中英文对照 一、会计与会计理论 会计 accounting 决策人 Decision Maker 投资人 Investor 股东 Shareholder 债权人 Creditor 财务会计 Financial Accounting 管理会计 Management Accounting 成本会计 Cost Accounting 私业会计 Private Accounting 公众会计 Public Accounting 注册会计师 CPA Certified Public Accountant 国际会计准则委员会 IASC 美国注册会计师协会 AICPA 财务会计准则委员会 FASB 管理会计协会 IMA 美国会计学会 AAA 税务稽核署 IRS 独资企业 Proprietorship 合伙人企业 Partnership 公司 Corporation
会计目标 Accounting Objectives 会计假设 Accounting Assumptions 会计要素 Accounting Elements 会计原则 Accounting Principles 会计实务过程 Accounting Procedures 财务报表 Financial Statements 财务分析Financial Analysis 会计主体假设 Separate-entity Assumption 货币计量假设 Unit-of-measure Assumption 持续经营假设 Continuity(Going-concern) Assumption 会计分期假设 Time-period Assumption 资产 Asset 负债 Liability 业主权益 Owner's Equity 收入 Revenue 费用 Expense 收益 Income 亏损 Loss 历史成本原则 Cost Principle 收入实现原则 Revenue Principle 配比原则 Matching Principle
iris 蝴蝶花hon eysuckle 金银花 chrysanthemum 菊花 carnation 康乃馨 orchid 兰花 canna 美人蕉 jasmine 茉莉花 daffodil 水仙花 peony 牡丹 begonia 秋海棠 cactus 仙人掌 christmas flower 圣诞花/一品红 poppy 罂粟 tulip 郁金香 chi nese rose 月 季 violet 紫罗兰 peach flower 桃花 aloe 芦荟 mimosa 含羞草 dandelion 蒲公英 plum bolssom 梅花中国水仙new year lily
石榴pomegranate 月桂victor's laurel 报春花polyanthus 木棉cotton tree 紫丁香lilac 吊钟lady's eardrops 紫荆Chinese redbud 百合lily 紫罗兰wall flower 桃花peach 紫藤wisteria 杜鹃azalea 铃兰lily-of-the-valley 牡丹tree peony 银杏ginkgo 芍药peony 蝴蝶兰moth orchid 辛夷violet magnolia 蟹爪仙人掌Christmas cactus 玫瑰rose 郁金香tulip
非洲堇African violet 栀子花cape jasmine 木槿rose of Sharon 风信子hyacinth 百子莲African lily 牵牛花morning glory 君子兰kefir lily 荷包花lady's pocketbook 含笑花bana shrub 非洲菊African daisy 含羞草sensitive plant 茉莉Arabian jasmine 猪笼草pitcher plant 凌霄花creeper 树兰orchid tree 康乃馨coronation 荷花lotus 鸢萝cypress vine 菩提botree 大理花dahlia
常见花的英文单词 中国水仙new year lily 石榴pomegranate 月桂victor's laurel 报春花polyanthus 木棉cotton tree 紫丁香lilac 吊钟lady's eardrops 紫荆Chinese redbud 百合lily 紫罗兰wall flower 桃花peach 紫藤wisteria 杜鹃azalea 铃兰lily-of-the-valley 牡丹tree peony 银杏ginkgo 芍药peony 蝴蝶兰moth orchid 辛夷violet magnolia 蟹爪仙人掌Christmas cactus 玫瑰rose 郁金香tulip 茶花common camellia 千日红common globe-amaranth 非洲堇African violet 栀子花cape jasmine 木槿rose of Sharon 风信子hyacinth 百子莲African lily 牵牛花morning glory 君子兰kefir lily 荷包花lady's pocketbook 含笑花banana shrub 非洲菊African daisy 含羞草sensitive plant 茉莉Arabian jasmine 猪笼草pitcher plant 凌霄花creeper 树兰orchid tree 康乃馨coronation 鸡冠花cockscomb
荷花lotus 鸢萝cypress vine 菩提botree 大理花dahlia 圣诞百合Christmas bell 一串红scarlet sage 紫薇crape myrtle 勿忘我forget-me-not 睡莲water lily 文心兰dancing lady 吊兰spider plant 白头翁pappy anemone 向日葵sunflower 矢车菊cornflower 竹bamboo 金鱼草snapdragon 夹竹桃oleander 金盏花pot marigold 月季花china rose 金银花honeysuckle 长春花old maid 金莲花garden nasturtium 秋海棠begonia 非洲凤仙African touch-me-not 美人蕉canna 曼陀罗angel's trumpet 晚香玉tuberose 梅花flowering apricot 野姜花ginger lily 圣诞红common poinsettia 菊花chrysanthemum 虞美人Iceland poppy 昙花epiphyllum 鸢尾iris 龙胆royal blue 腊梅winter sweet 麒麟花crown of thorns 木芙蓉cotton rose 九重葛paper flower 火鹤花flamingo flower 三色堇tricolor viola 嘉德丽亚兰cattleya
亚洲常见花卉英文译名Abutilon pictum / Thomsonii风铃花 Abutilon Hybriden金铃花 Acacia dealbata银栲皮树 Acaena / New Zealand burr无瓣蔷薇(纽西兰球果属植物) Acanthus叶蓟属植物 Acer palmatum掌叶槭 Achillea / Yarrow丽纹锯草(蓍草属植物) Achimenes / Cupid's bower / hot water plant长筒花Actinidia狝猴桃<--攀缘植物 Adenium obesum沙漠玫瑰(天宝花) Adiantum capilus-veneris / True maidenhair fern铁线蕨Aegopodium podagraia 'Variegata'斑叶羊角芹 African daisy非洲菊 Agapanthus / African lily百子莲 Agastache藿香 Agave龙舌兰属植物 Ageratum houstonianum紫花霍香蓟 Agrostemma githago / Corn cockle麦仙翁 Ajuga reptans匍筋骨草 Akebia木通(别名:巧克力藤蔓) <--攀缘植物
Alcea rosea / Hollyhock蜀葵 Alchemilla / Lady's mantle斗篷草 Allium葱属 Aloe芦荟属植物 Alyssum香荠属植物 Amaranthus苋属植物 Ampelopsis山葡萄<--攀缘植物 Ampelopsis brevipedunculata蛇白蔹 Anchusa capensis / Alkanet非洲勿忘草Androsace carnea / Rock jasmine铜钱花Anethu, graveolens / Dill莳萝 Annual phlox福禄考 Antennaria dioica山荻 Anthemis西洋甘菊 Anthemis punctata subsp cupaniana春黄菊Antirrhinum majus / Snapdragon金鱼草 Arabis / Rock cress南芥菜(岩水芹) Aralia elata黃斑高? Arbutus野草莓樹 Arctotis Fastuosa / Monarch of the veldt南非雛菊Arenaria balearica蚤綴
AICPA财务英语中英文对照表 A account 账户 account payable 应付账款 accounting system 会计系统 Accounting Principle Board (APB) （美国）会计准则委员会 accrual basis 权责发生制（应计制） accumulated depreciation 累计折旧 account FORMat 账户格式 accrue 应计 accounting cycle 会计循环 accounts receivable 应收账款 accounts receivable turnover 应收账款周转率 accelerated depreciation 加速折旧 adjusting entries 调整分录 adjustment 调整 aging of accounts receivable 应收账款账龄分析法 allowance for bad debts 坏账准备 allowance for doubtful accounts 坏账准备 allowance for uncollectible 坏账准备 allowance method 备抵法 allowance for depreciation 折旧备抵账户 amortization 摊销 annual report 年度报告 annuity 年金 assets 资产
audit 审计 auditor’s opinion 审计意见书 auditor 审计师 audit committee 审计委员会 average collection period 平均收账期AICPA 美国注册会计师协会 APB Opinions 会计准则委员会意见书B balance 余额 bad debt recoveries 坏账收回 bad debts 坏账 bad debts expense 坏账费用 balance sheet 资产负债表 balance sheet equation 资产负债表等式basket purchase 一揽子采购 betterment 改造投资，改造工程投资bearer instrument 不记名票据 bonds 债券 book of original entry 原始分录账簿 book value 账面价值 C capital 资本 capital stock certificate 股本证明书 cash basis 收付实现制（现金收付制）cash dividends 现金股利 cash flow statement 现金流量表 carrying amount 账面价值 carrying value 账面价值 callable bonds 可赎债券，可提前兑回债券
A (1)ABC 作业基础成本计算 A (2)absorbed overhead 已汲取制造费用 A (3)absorption costing 汲取成本计算 A (4)account 帐户,报表 A (5)accounting postulate 会计假设 A (6)accounting series release 会计公告文件 A (7)accounting valuation 会计计价 A (8)account sale 承销清单 A (9)accountability concept 经营责任概念 A (10)accountancy 会计职业 A (11)accountant 会计师 A (12)accounting 会计 A (13)agency cost 代理成本 A (14)accounting bases 会计基础 A (15)accounting manual 会计手册 A (16)accounting period 会计期间 A (17)accounting policies 会计方针 A (18)accounting rate of return 会计酬劳率 A (19)accounting reference date 会计参照日 A (20)accounting reference period 会计参照期间A (21)accrual concept 应计概念 A (22)accrual expenses 应计费用
A (23)acid test ration 速动比率(酸性测试比率) A (24)acquisition 购置 A (25)acquisition accounting 收购会计 A (26)activity based accounting 作业基础成本计算A (27)adjusting events 调整事项 A (28)administrative expenses 行政治理费 A (29)advice note 发货通知 A (30)amortization 摊销 A (31)analytical review 分析性检查 A (32)annual equivalent cost 年度等量成本法 A (33)annual report and accounts 年度报告和报表A (34)appraisal cost 检验成本 A (35)appropriation account 盈余分配帐户 A (36)articles of association 公司章程细则 A (37)assets 资产 A (38)assets cover 资产保障 A (39)asset value per share 每股资产价值 A (40)associated company 联营公司 A (41)attainable standard 可达标准 A (42)attributable profit 可归属利润 A (43)audit 审计 A (44)audit report 审计报告
财务术语中英文对照大全，财务人必备！ 2015-05-28注册会计师注册会计师 知道“会计”的英语怎么说吗？不会？那可真够无语的额！ 想要进入外资企业做会计？想要进入四大会计师事务所工作？好的英语水平是必不可少的！所以小编特地整理了财务数中英文大全，赶紧从基础英语学起，拿起笔做好笔记吧！ 增加见识也好，装装逼也行。 目录 一、会计与会计理论 二、会计循环 三、现金与应收账款 四、存货 五、长期投资 六、固定资产 七、无形资产
八、流动负债 九、长期负债 十、业主权益 一、财务报表 二、财务状况变动表 三、财务报表分析 四、合并财务报表 五、物价变动中的会计计量 一、会计与会计理论 会计accounting 决策人Decision Maker 投资人Investor 股东Shareholder 债权人Creditor 财务会计Financial Accounting 管理会计Management Accounting成本会计Cost Accounting
私业会计Private Accounting 公众会计Public Accounting 注册会计师CPA Certified Public Accountant 国际会计准则委员会IASC 美国注册会计师协会AICPA 财务会计准则委员会FASB 管理会计协会IMA 美国会计学会AAA 税务稽核署IRS 独资企业Proprietorship 合伙人企业Partnership 公司Corporation 会计目标Accounting Objectives 会计假设Accounting Assumptions 会计要素Accounting Elements 会计原则Accounting Principles 会计实务过程Accounting Procedures 财务报表Financial Statements 财务分析Financial Analysis 会计主体假设Separate-entity Assumption 货币计量假设Unit-of-measure Assumption 持续经营假设Continuity(Going-concern)Assumption
各种花卉的中英文名称对照 mangnolia 玉兰花 morning glory 牵牛(喇叭花) narcissus 水仙花 oleander 夹竹桃 orchid 兰花 pansy 三色堇 peony 牡丹 peony 芍药 phalaenopsis 蝶兰 rose 玫瑰 rose 月季 setose asparagus 文竹touch-me-not (balsam) 凤仙花 tulip 郁金香 violet, stock violet 紫罗兰 water hyacinth 凤眼兰 Chinese enkianthus 灯笼花 Chinese flowering crab-apple 海棠花金橘－－－－kumquat 米仔兰(米兰）－－milan tree 变叶木－－croton 一品红－－poinsettia 扶桑－－Chinese hibiscus 吊灯花－－fringed hibiscus 马拉巴栗（发财树)－－ Guiana chestnut 山茶－－camellia 云南山茶－－Yunnan camellia 金花茶－－－golden camellia 瑞香－－daphne 结香－－－paper bush 倒挂金钟－－fuchsia 八角金盘－－Japan fatsia 常春藤－－ivy 鹅掌柴－－umbrella tree 杜鹃花－－rhododendron 茉莉花－－jasmine 桂花－－sweet osmanthus 夹竹桃－－sweet-scented oleander 黄花夹竹桃－－lucky-nut-thevetia 鸡蛋花－－frangipani 龙吐珠－－bleeding-heart glorybower 夜香树（木本夜来香）－－night jasmine 鸳鸯茉莉－－broadleaf raintree 栀子花－－cape jasmine 蝴蝶兰－－moth orchid 卡特兰－－cattleya 石斛－－dendrobium 兜兰－－lady slipper 兰花－－orchid 春兰－－goering cymbidium 仙客来－－florists cyclamen
account 账户、科目 account payable 应付账款 account title / accounting item 会计科目 accounting document/ accounting voucument 会计凭证 accounting element 会计要素 accounting entity 会计主体 accounting entries 会计分录 accounting equation / accounting identity 会计恒等式 accounting function 会计职能 accounting postulate 会计假设 accounting principle 会计原则 accounting report /accounting statement 会计报表 accounting standard 会计准则 accounting time period concept 会计分期 accounts receivable / receivables
accrual- basis accounting 权责发生制原则 accumulated depreciation 累计折旧 amortization expense /expense not allocated 待摊费用 annual statement 年报 Arthur Andersen Worldwide 安达信全球 assets 资产 balance 余额 balance sheet 资产负债表 begainning balance/ opening balance 期初余额 capital 资本 capital expenditure 资本性支出 capital share 股本 capital surplus 资本公积 cash 现金
亚洲常见花卉英文译名 Abutilon pictum / Thomsonii 风铃花 Abutilon Hybriden 金铃花 Acacia dealbata 银栲皮树 Acaena / New Zealand burr 无瓣蔷薇(纽西兰球果属植物) Acanthus 叶蓟属植物 Acer palmatum 掌叶槭 Achillea / Yarrow 丽纹锯草(蓍草属植物) Achimenes / Cupid's bower / hot water plant 长筒花Actinidia 狝猴桃<--攀缘植物 Adenium obesum 沙漠玫瑰(天宝花) Adiantum capilus-veneris / True maidenhair fern 铁线蕨Aegopodium podagraia 'Variegata' 斑叶羊角芹 African daisy 非洲菊 Agapanthus / African lily 百子莲 Agastache 藿香 Agave 龙舌兰属植物 Ageratum houstonianum 紫花霍香蓟 Agrostemma githago / Corn cockle 麦仙翁 Ajuga reptans 匍筋骨草 Akebia 木通(别名:巧克力藤蔓) <--攀缘植物 Alcea rosea / Hollyhock 蜀葵 Alchemilla / Lady's mantle 斗篷草 Allium 葱属 Aloe 芦荟属植物 Alyssum 香荠属植物 Amaranthus 苋属植物 Ampelopsis 山葡萄<--攀缘植物 Ampelopsis brevipedunculata 蛇白蔹 Anchusa capensis / Alkanet 非洲勿忘草 Androsace carnea / Rock jasmine 铜钱花 Anethu, graveolens / Dill 莳萝 Annual phlox 福禄考 Antennaria dioica 山荻 Anthemis 西洋甘菊 Anthemis punctata subsp cupaniana 春黄菊 Antirrhinum majus / Snapdragon 金鱼草 Arabis / Rock cress 南芥菜(岩水芹) Aralia elata 黃斑高? Arbutus 野草莓樹 Arctotis Fastuosa / Monarch of the veldt 南非雛菊Arenaria balearica 蚤綴 Argemone / Prickly Poppy 薊罌粟屬植物
黑色字体：为新疆植物志有，英文版也保留； 红色字体：为新疆植物志有，英文版无； 绿色字体：为新疆植物志没有，英文版有； 十字花科——CRUCIFERAE 1.长柄芥族--Trib.Stanleyeae 1.长柄芥属——Macropodoum 1.长柄芥M．nivale 2．芸苔族——Trib.Brassiceae 2．芸苔属——Brassica 1.甘蓝B．oleracea 莲花白var. capitata L. 花椰菜var. botrytis L. 羽衣甘蓝var. acephala L. 绿花菜var.italica 擘蓝B.oleracea var. gongylodes L. 2.擘蓝B．caulorapa——合入擘蓝B.oleracea var. gongylodes L 3. 欧洲油菜B．napus 4. 芜青B．rapa——蔓青 芸苔B.rapa var.oleifera DC. 白菜B.rapa var. glabra Reg. 青菜B.rapa var.chinensis (L.)Kitamura 5. 白菜B．pekinensis*----------合入芜青B．rapa var.glabra 6. 青菜B．chinenis-------------合入芜青B．rapa var.chinensis 7.芸苔B．campestris* ---------合入芜青B．rapa 8. 芥菜B．juncea 芥菜(原变种) var. juncea 芥菜疙瘩B.juncea var.napiformis 大头菜(变种) var. megarrhiza——合入芥菜疙瘩B.juncea var.napiformis 雪里蕻(变种) var. multiceps Tsen et Lee——合入芥菜(原变种) var. juncea 油芥菜(变种) var. gracilis Tsen. et Lee——合入芥菜(原变种) var. juncea 9. 黑芥B.nigra 10.新疆毛芥B.xinjiangensis——合入新疆白芥S.arrensis 11. 短喙芥B.brevirostrata——合入短喙芥B. elongata 12.短喙芥B. elongata 3．白芥属——Sinapis 1.白芥S.alba 2.田野白芥S. arvensi s L.——叫新疆白芥S.arvensis 长喙白芥var. brachycrpa——不知去向
财务术语中英文对照FinancialAccounting （1）会计与会计理论 会计accounting 决策人DecisionMaker 投资人Investor 股东Shareholder 债权人Creditor 财务会计FinancialAccounting 管理会计ManagementAccounting 成本会计CostAccounting 私业会计PrivateAccounting 公众会计PublicAccounting 注册会计师CPACertifiedPublicAccountant 国际会计准则委员会IASC 美国注册会计师协会AICPA 财务会计准则委员会FASB 管理会计协会IMA 美国会计学会AAA 税务稽核署IRS 独资企业Proprietorship 合伙人企业Partnership 公司Corporation 会计目标AccountingObjectives 会计假设AccountingAssumptions 会计要素AccountingElements 会计原则AccountingPrinciples 会计实务过程AccountingProcedures 财务报表FinancialStatements 财务分析FinancialAnalysis 会计主体假设Separate-entityAssumption 货币计量假设Unit-of-measureAssumption 持续经营假设 Continuity(Going-concern)Assumption 会计分期假设Time-periodAssumption 资产Asset 负债Liability 业主权益Owner'sEquity 收入Revenue 费用Expense 收益Income 亏损Loss 历史成本原则CostPrinciple 收入实现原则RevenuePrinciple 配比原则MatchingPrinciple 全面披露原则 Full-disclosure(Reporting)Principle 客观性原则ObjectivePrinciple 一致性原则ConsistentPrinciple 可比性原则ComparabilityPrinciple 重大性原则MaterialityPrinciple 稳健性原则ConservatismPrinciple 权责发生制AccrualBasis
茉莉花 :Jasmine 玫瑰花:Rose 海棠花 begonia 菊花chrysanthemum 丁香花：Lilac 康乃馨：Carnation 紫罗兰：Violet 百合：Lily 荷花：Lotus tulip 郁金香 sunflower 向日葵 geranium 天竺葵 morning-glory 牵牛花 pansy 三色堇，三色紫罗兰 poppy 罂粟花 marigold 金盏花 hyacinth 风信花 daffodil 水仙 marguerite, daisy 雏菊 orchid 兰花 cyclamen 仙客来 hawthorn 山楂
camellia 山茶 peony 芍药，牡丹 azalea 杜鹃 gardenia 栀子 最早花语的起源是古希腊，但是那个时候不止是花，还有叶子、果树都有一定的含义。在希腊神话里记载过爱神出生时创造了玫瑰的故事，玫瑰从那个时代起就成为了爱情的代名词。 真正花语盛行是在法国皇室时期，贵族们将民间对于花卉的资料整理遍档，里面就包括了花语的信息，这样的信息在宫廷后期的园林建筑中得到了完美的体现。 大众对于花语的接受是在18XX年左右，那个时候的社会风气还不是十分开放，在大庭广众下表达爱意是难为情的事情，所以恋人间赠送的花卉就成为了爱情的信使。 随着时代的发展，花卉成为了社交的一种赠与品，更加完善的花语代表了赠送者的意图。 我找出了一部分如下： 5.凤尾の热情 很久很久以前，铁角凤尾草就被当做迷恋要来使用。换句话说，只要把根茎的汁液让意中人喝下，就可以抓住对方的心。铁角凤尾草是一种具备特殊迷惑力的植物，因此它的花语是－热情。
第一课财务会计导读 Glossary accrual basis 权责发生制 Asset资产 balance sheet资产负债表 capital adequacy ratio 资本充足率 cash basis 收付实现制 cash flow statement现金流量表 double entry method 复式记账法 Expenses费用 Fair value公允价值 financial reports 财务报告 going concern 持续经营 guarantee 担保 Historical cost历史成本 Impairment 减值 impairment provision减值准备 income statement利润表 Liabilities负债 Maturity 到期 Net realizable value可变现净值 Owners’ Equity 所有者权益 post-amortization costs摊余成本 Present value现值 Profit利润 Replacement cost重置成本 stewardship 受托责任 transferor转出方 transferee转入方 1.资产类科目Assets 现金：Cash and cash equivalents 银行存款：Bank deposit 应收账款：Account receivable 应收票据：Notes receivable 应收股利：Dividend receivable 应收利息：Interest receivable 其他应收款：Other receivables 原材料：Raw materials 在途物资：Materials in transport 库存商品：inventory 存货跌价准备：provision for the decline in value of inventories
各种花的花语及中英文对照＾＿＾（１）一月 1月1日纯白的爱雪莲花（Snow Drop） 1月2日神秘黄水仙（Narcisus Jonquilla) 1月3日执著藏红花（Spring Crocus) 1月4日游戏人生风信子（Hyacinth) 1月5日耐心雪割草（hepatica) 1月6日洁白无瑕的爱白色紫罗兰（Violet) 1月7日单恋白色郁金香（Tulip) 1月8日爱情紫色紫罗兰（Violet) 1月9日纯朴黄色紫罗兰（Voilet) 1月10日不屈不挠黄杨（Box-Tree) 1月11日善良匀桧叶（Arbor-Vitae) 1月12日优雅庭荠(Sweet Alyssum) 1月13日自我水仙(Narcissus) 1月14日含羞报春花(Cyclamen) 1月15日严格剌竹（Thorn) 1月16日竞争黄色风信子(Hyacinth) 1月17日挚爱酸模（Sorrel) 1月18日猜测印度锦葵（Indian Mallow) 1月19日健康，长寿松（Pine) 1月20日童真金凤花（Butter Cup) 1月21日沉静，安详常春藤（Ivy) 1月22日母爱苔藓（Moss) 1月23日服从芦荟（Bulrush) 1月24日进退得宜番红花（Saffron Crocus) 1月25日纯真鼠耳草（Cerasrium) 1月26日敏感含羞草（Humble Plant) 1月27日坚固七度灶（Mountain Ash) 1月28日勇气黑色白杨木（Black Piolar) 1月29日呵护苔藓（Moss) 1月30日盼望的幸福金盏花（Marsh Marigold) 1月31日青春喜悦黄色藏红花（Spring Crocus) 二月 2月1日青春的烦恼樱草（Primrose） 2月2日平凡木瓜花（Japanese Quince） 2月3日奉献小豆蔻（Cardamine） 2月4日无悔的爱红色樱草（Primrose） 2月5日迷人芍药(Paeonia lactiflora[P.albiflora])