In the last three days of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's fiscal year, the SEC announced four corporate settlements involving alleged improper earnings management. The SEC's Division of Enforcement also disclosed that two of these settlements arose out of an Earnings Per Share Initiative - a risk-based data analytics initiative designed to discover accounting and disclosure violations related to earnings management.
This flurry of activity makes clear that the Division of Enforcement continued to focus on earnings management in 2020 and will continue to do so next year.
Originally published in Law360 - October 13, 2020.
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