Earnings Management by Means of Changes in Accounting Entities - The Case of Tobu Railway Company -

Abstract

Companies sometime hide liabilities or losses through changes in accounting entity. Although few textbooks deal with this topic, studying how to use changing entity is very important. In this case, we consider the Tobu Railway Company, which has benefited from industrial policy on several occasions through affecting changes in accounting entity. To ignore this aspect of the company in any analysis, investors and/or analysts attempting to analyze this company would misunderstand it. Through investigating a company’s current accounting entity situation, we are sometimes able to quantify the benefits and/or changes attributed to the accounting entity. The case described below is intended for undergraduate accounting students, graduate students, MBA students, CPAs, security analysts, and other business people who want to increase their awareness of, and to improve their business analysis techniques.