Part V

The Many Ways Companies Answer to Stakeholders

In this part . . .

No public company operates in a vacuum. Instead, every public company must answer to its shareholders and lenders as well as government overseers and financial analysts. On top of all that, auditors must certify that what a company reports is correct. All these parties play some role in why annual reports are presented in the way they are today. In this part, we discuss some of the key outside entities a company must answer to. We also take a look at the ways some companies play games with the numbers that they report.