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In early 2022, the technology firm MicroStrategy unveiled a series of letters with the SEC that questioned its accounting practices around its holdings of Bitcoin. Since 2020, the firm had shifted its strategy to include not just selling software but buying and holding large quantities of Bitcoin. But accounting standards for cryptocurrency remained unclear, which could lead to conflicts such as this one with the SEC.

In 2013, two employees debated whether to blow the whistle on their employer, Uptown Bank, after completing an internal review that revealed undisclosed conflicts of interest. Uptown Bank's Asset Management business disproportionately invested clients' money in Uptown Bank's mutual funds over funds managed by other banks, letting Uptown Bank collect additional fees-and the bank had not disclosed this conflict of interest to clients. Both employees agreed that failing to disclose the conflict was a problem, but beyond that, they saw the situation very differently. One employee, Neel, perceived the internal review as a good-faith effort by Uptown Bank's senior management to identify and address the problem. The other, Akash, thought that the entire business model was problematic, even with a disclosure, and believed that Uptown Bank may have even broken the law. They considered their options: Should they escalate the issue internally or report it to Uptown Bank's board of directors? Should they go even further and report their findings to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission? What would the potential risks and rewards of speaking out be?

In early 2019, Anthony Campagna, the global director of fundamental research at ISS EVA, a unit of the proxy advisory firm Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS), was preparing to release ISS's analyses of public company performance and CEO compensation ahead of Say on Pay (SOP) voting. ISS's reports helped institutions and other investors determine how to vote their shares at annual shareholder meetings. The report's assessment of CEO compensation for SOP relied on the degree of alignment between a CEO's industry-relative compensation and the firm's industry-relative performance. ISS had long used total shareholder return (TSR)-a measurement based on a company's stock price appreciation and dividend payouts-to measure company performance. In 2019, for the first time, ISS supplemented the TSR measure with economic value added (EVA)-a measurement based on accounting data that combined operating profit and a charge for capital-to measure performance. ISS believed that using EVA as a complement to TSR painted a more complete picture of company performance than TSR alone. EVA was, however, a far more complicated and not widely understood performance metric. Interpreting EVA for certain types of firms-young, high-growth, investment-intensive-could also be challenging. Campagna wondered how market participants would respond to ISS's use of EVA in its voting recommendations, particularly when TSR and EVA could make company performance look quite different. Did the benefits of EVA make managing its complexities worthwhile? Was EVA too complicated for investors to understand? Would EVA work equally well for young and high-growth firms as for mature firms? How might Campagna best promote the use of EVA?

In 2019, Bruno Masson, the vice chairman of Veolia's Ethics Committee, was preparing for a meeting on a rollout plan for a new whistleblowing system to more countries. Veolia, a global supplier of water, waste, and energy services, had recently gone through several incidents of corporate misconduct. In response, Veolia believed that strengthening corporate whistleblowing was an essential next step to prevent future incidents of misconduct. Given the positive experiences with its existing platform in the U.S., Veolia had originally tested this platform in Germany, where both corporate and legal protections for whistleblowers were weaker compared to the U.S.. However, this rollout turned out to be unsuccessful. This initial setback prompted Masson to try a different approach to encourage more whistleblowing. They hired an outside vendor to provide Veolia with new whistleblowing capabilities. Would the new system be more successful in encouraging employees to report their concerns? How would the whistleblowing laws in Germany influence the effectiveness of this platform? Could this technology have negative implications for employee trust and productivity in the long run?

Set in April 2021, this case tells the story of Mauro Botta, a senior manager at PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC). In 2016, Botta filed a whistleblower claim with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, alleging that PwC had failed to fulfill its obligations to remain independent on several audits dating back to 2012. In 2017, PwC fired Botta. While PwC claimed that the decision had nothing to do with the SEC complaint, Botta believed that the move was retaliatory. In March 2018, he sued PwC for wrongful termination.

A note on regulatory technology (RegTech) describing its evolution, use cases, and the competitive environment in 2021.

On February 15, 2021, Alina Moss, an analyst who covered the technology company MicroStrategy, pondered a rise in MicroStrategy's share price. Moss had dialed into the company earnings call. When it ended, Moss had more questions than answers. MicroStrategy had recorded a meager operating income of $390,000 in the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2020, yet its non-GAAP operating income was $30.1 million and its share price had climbed 160% during the period. In 2020, MicroStrategy had invested heavily in Bitcoin, and its CEO Michael Saylor said that MicroStrategy would continue using Bitcoin as its primary treasury reserve asset. The accounting treatment of cryptocurrencies was murky as standard setters had not yet decided how firms should account for cryptocurrencies, leaving it up to companies to determine the appropriate accounting. MicroStrategy treated cryptocurrencies as intangible assets on its financial statements, as did many other firms. Accounting rules for intangible assets required reporting downward price shifts as impairment losses but did not require the recording of upswings in price. MicroStrategy disclosed a significant decline in net income as compared to the fourth quarter of 2019 because of impairment losses on Bitcoin. How well was MicroStrategy really doing? Did the current accounting treatment for cryptocurrencies make sense for companies holding Bitcoin? How should investors assess firms' Bitcoin investments?

Supplement to the (A) case that offers an assessment of the August 2019 Markopolos report on General Electric.

Student spreadsheet supplement to case 120114

Wirecard was a German fintech company, member of the DAX30, that provided payment processing and related services. Wirecard had enjoyed large growth rates over the years and most investors and analysts were enthusiastic about the company's prospects. Wirecard's business model was not easy to understand for outsiders, and the company's financials often lacked the necessary details to fully comprehend the company's dealings. Throughout the years, Wirecard had been subject to allegations of fraud, including money-laundering allegations and accounting-fraud allegations, among others. However, up until spring 2020, Wirecard was able to reject these claims. In June 2020, investors and the public learn the truth about Germany's digital darling: a major part of Wirecard's business was fraudulent, and a sum of €1.9 billion, supposedly held in trust accounts in the Philippines, is non-existent. James Freis, who had just been hired as a new member of the Management Board, finds himself interim CEO and is trying to understand how this seemingly massive fraud could have gone undetected for so long, and why it began in the first place.

Spreadsheet supplement for case 120069.

In August 2019, Harry Markopolos-the forensic accountant known for uncovering Bernie Madoff's Ponzi scheme-alleged that General Electric had committed accounting fraud totaling $38 billion, coining the term "GEnron" for perceived similarities with the 2001 accounting fraud at Enron that brought down that company and its auditor. Specifically, Markopolos claimed, GE would need to generate $29 billion in reserves against its insurance obligations, and restate its financials to recognize $9 billion in unreported losses on an oil subsidiary. Though GE management rejected these assertions, repeated writedowns and restatements of GE's performance since 2017 had made investors wary. They now scrambled to assess the merits of Markopolos's claims.

In May 2020, an analyst was assessing eHealth's performance. eHealth was an online / tele-sales broker of health insurance products. The stock had recently hit all-time highs, closing at a peak of $146 on March 4, 2020. But now, May 4, 2020, eHealth traded at $103. The recent fall had wiped nearly $1.0B from the company's market capitalization because well-known short seller Carson Block had released a short-report on the company. Carson Block argued that eHealth's management had undertaken "massive stock promotion." In the report, Block said that eHealth's adoption of the new revenue recognition standard - ASC 606 - inflated revenue and masked the fact that eHealth was losing money on each new policy that it sold. Still, eHealth's valuation remained elevated at 3.3x FY2021E Revenue, 21x FY2021E adjusted net income, even assuming away accounting uncertainty. In addition, the mean consensus share price target as of May 4, 2020 was $179. Did the latest news provide a buying opportunity? Or was it best to avoid eHealth, even perhaps consider shorting the company?

In March 2020, as coronavirus reduced demand for air travel, an analyst was forecasting American Airlines' (American's) first quarter financial results. To develop a forecast, she needed to familiarize herself with Accounting Standards Update (ASU) 2016-02, "Leases (Topic 842)," passed four years earlier by the Financial Accounting Standards Board. ASU 2016-02 required companies to disclose all leases on their balance sheets, but it made an exception for leases with variable payments, allowing companies to leave such leases off-balance sheet. The Wall Street Journal estimated that more than 50% of American's leases remained off-balance sheet due to the exclusion of variable leases. Should American and other companies be allowed to leave variable lease payments off-balance sheet? How did the decision to leave these payments off-balance sheet affect companies' risk profiles and valuations?

This is a supplement to the "Accounting for Leases at American Airlines (A)" case. The (B) case describes American Airlines' financial results for the first quarter of 2020, as well as the continuing effects of coronavirus on the airline industry.

In December 2019, Atabek Nazirov, head of Uzbekistan's capital market regulatory agency, prepared the release of Uzbekistan's capital market strategy. As Nazirov was getting ready to release the strategy, he reflected on the first year of his tenure and the steps ahead. Did he take the right actions to strengthen Uzbekistan's capital market? What additional features would the capital market need to build trust with both the citizens of Uzbekistan and international investors? How could he convince the critics within the administration that his focus on a market-based economy would serve Uzbekistan best? And how could he deliver quick results to retain the president's support?

The case discusses the strategy of DER SPIEGEL, the leading news magazine in Germany, in the aftermath of the discovery of a fake reporting scandal. It had come to light that one of DER SPIEGEL's own reporters had falsified and made up entire articles for years, despite DER SPIEGEL's large fact-checking departments. New editor-in-chief Steffen Klusmann and an internal investigation commission had set to work to discover the problems within DER SPIEGEL that made this failure possible, and had come up with a series of recommendations for improvement. At the heart of the investigation was the question whether the scandal was the result of one bad apple or whether DER SPIEGEL had systematic failures in its control systems.

This (C) case complements the case "Fake News at DER SPIEGEL (A)".

This (B) case serves as a complement to the case "Fake News at DER SPIEGEL (A)".

Mark Cooke, Global Head of Operational Risk, needed to decide between a traditional regulatory control system and a new regtech system to manage non-financial risks. Non-financial risks failures such as money laundering and tax evasion had cost HSBC billions of dollars in fines and settlements over the previous decade. In response, HSBC had hired thousands of risk and compliance staff and invested billions in traditional control systems. Cooke, however, could not be sure HSBC's traditional methods were sufficient and he was worried they were not sustainable. Cooke recently ran a pilot test of a regtech solution that promised to warn of problem areas in advance, and do so at a much lower cost than traditional systems. The regtech solution provider was a small startup and the technology was not fully developed. Cooke wondered how much he could trust a technology from a startup company with a handful of employees and almost no revenue to meet the needs of a world-leading bank with global operations.