Week 1 – Discussion

“Public companies must, by law, publish their financial statements every year. For an example, look at Appendix A of Intermediate Accounting. There, you will find the complete 2007 financial statements and supplementary data of the Coca-Cola Company. For this week’s first Discussion, you will find, analyze, and discuss another public company’s financial statements.
Select any public company and go to their website. Locate the company’s most recently filed financial statements (i.e. 10K or 10Q) and then look up Note 1 in those statements. This note summarizes the significant accounting policies of the company. Refer to the “Business and Significant Accounting Policies” section of the Annual “10K” and Quarterly “10Q” report. Select two of the accounting principles in the report.

Then post at least 250 words answering the following question:
Did the company implement any new accounting standards during the year?
If so, which ones did it implement? What was the impact of those changes? In other words, how did those new standards affect the company’s bottom line?
If not, do you think there are any standards issued during the reporting period that they should have implemented? Why?
(Be sure to support your work with specific citations from at least 2 of these resources :
1) Nikolai, L. A., Bazley, J. D., & Jones, J. P. (2010). Intermediate accounting (11th ed.). Mason, OH: South-Western Cengage Learning.
Appendix A, “The Coca-Cola Company 2007 Financial Statements and Supplementary Data.”
2) Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) promulgated literature.
3) Kruglinski, J. A. (2009). CPAs: Many doors to opportunity. Pennsylvania CPA Journal, 79(4), 38–41
4) Cheney, G. A. (2009). Is standard setting independence at stake, again? Would investors trust “generally accepted flexible accounting principles?” Financial Executive, 25(10), 16–17.
5) Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) http://www.fasb.org/home
6) The American Institute of CPAs https://www.aicpa.org
7) the SEC https://www.sec.gov
8) The IFRS Foundation http://www.ifrs.org”