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Comfort Letter
A comfort letter is a document prepared by an accounting firm assuring the financial soundness or backing of a company. The comfort letter can be issued by a Certified Public Accountant declaring no indication of false or misleading information in the financial statements and that the company's prospectus follows the prevailing accounting standards. This is sometimes used in connection with an initial public offering. Comfort letters are also sometimes provided by those involved in evaluating a company's assets, for instance, in the case of oil and gas companies, third-party reserve engineering firms. A comfort letter may also be used as written assurance by a subsidiary's parent company or bank used to offer 'comfort' to the buyer as to the seller's ability or willingness to perform its obligations. Comfort letters are often used because the seller is unable or unwilling to provide a guarantee on a certain outcome, such as the performance of a security. Comfort letters are typica ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Accountancy
Accounting, also known as accountancy, is the process of recording and processing information about economic entities, such as businesses and corporations. Accounting measures the results of an organization's economic activities and conveys this information to a variety of stakeholders, including investors, creditors, management, and regulators. Practitioners of accounting are known as accountants. The terms "accounting" and " financial reporting" are often used interchangeably. Accounting can be divided into several fields including financial accounting, management accounting, tax accounting and cost accounting. Financial accounting focuses on the reporting of an organization's financial information, including the preparation of financial statements, to the external users of the information, such as investors, regulators and suppliers. Management accounting focuses on the measurement, analysis and reporting of information for internal use by management to enhance bu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Certified Public Accountant
Certified Public Accountant (CPA) is the title of qualified accountants in numerous countries in the English-speaking world. It is generally equivalent to the title of chartered accountant in other English-speaking countries. In the United States, the CPA is a license to provide accounting services to the public. It is awarded by each of the 50 states for practice in that state. Additionally, all states except Hawaii have passed mobility laws to allow CPAs from other states to practice in their state. State licensing requirements vary, but the minimum standard requirements include passing the Uniform Certified Public Accountant Examination, 150 semester units of college education, and one year of accounting-related experience. Continuing professional education (CPE) is also required to maintain licensure. Individuals who have been awarded the CPA but have lapsed in the fulfillment of the required CPE or who have requested conversion to inactive status are in many states permitte ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Prospectus (finance)
A prospectus, in finance, is a disclosure document that describes a financial security for potential buyers. It commonly provides investors with material information about mutual funds, stocks, bonds and other investments, such as a description of the company's business, financial statements, biographies of officers and directors, detailed information about their compensation, any litigation that is taking place, a list of material properties and any other material information. In the context of an individual securities offering, such as an initial public offering, a prospectus is distributed by underwriters or other financial firms to potential investors. Today, prospectuses are most widely distributed through websites such as EDGAR and its equivalents in other countries. United States In a securities offering in the United States, a prospectus is required to be filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) as part of a registration statement. The issuer may not ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Initial Public Offering
An initial public offering (IPO) or stock launch is a public offering in which shares of a company are sold to institutional investors and usually also to retail (individual) investors. An IPO is typically underwritten by one or more investment banks, who also arrange for the shares to be listed on one or more stock exchanges. Through this process, colloquially known as ''floating'', or ''going public'', a privately held company is transformed into a public company. Initial public offerings can be used to raise new equity capital for companies, to monetize the investments of private shareholders such as company founders or private equity investors, and to enable easy trading of existing holdings or future capital raising by becoming publicly traded. After the IPO, shares are traded freely in the open market at what is known as the free float. Stock exchanges stipulate a minimum free float both in absolute terms (the total value as determined by the share price multiplied ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Subsidiary
A subsidiary, subsidiary company, or daughter company is a company (law), company completely or partially owned or controlled by another company, called the parent company or holding company, which has legal and financial control over the subsidiary company. Unlike regional branches or divisions, subsidiaries are considered to be distinct entities from their parent companies; they are required to follow the laws of where they are incorporated, and they maintain their own executive leadership. Two or more subsidiaries primarily controlled by same entity/group are considered to be sister companies of each other. Subsidiaries are a common feature of modern business, and most multinational corporations organize their operations via the creation and purchase of subsidiary companies. Examples of holding companies are Berkshire Hathaway, Jefferies Financial Group, The Walt Disney Company, Warner Bros. Discovery, and Citigroup, which have subsidiaries involved in many different Industry (e ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Security (finance)
A security is a tradable financial asset. The term commonly refers to any form of financial instrument, but its legal definition varies by jurisdiction. In some countries and languages people commonly use the term "security" to refer to any form of financial instrument, even though the underlying legal and regulatory regime may not have such a broad definition. In some jurisdictions the term specifically excludes financial instruments other than equity and fixed income instruments. In some jurisdictions it includes some instruments that are close to equities and fixed income, e.g., equity warrants. Securities may be represented by a certificate or, more typically, they may be "non-certificated", that is in electronic ( dematerialized) or " book entry only" form. Certificates may be ''bearer'', meaning they entitle the holder to rights under the security merely by holding the security, or ''registered'', meaning they entitle the holder to rights only if they appear on a securi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Due Diligence
Due diligence is the investigation or exercise of care that a reasonable business or person is normally expected to take before entering into an agreement or contract with another party or an act with a certain standard of care. Due diligence can be a legal obligation, but the term more commonly applies to voluntary investigations. It may also offer a defence against legal action. A common example of due diligence is the process through which a potential acquirer evaluates a target company or its assets in advance of a merger or acquisition. The theory behind due diligence holds that performing this type of investigation contributes significantly to informed decision making by enhancing the amount and quality of information available to decision makers and by ensuring that this information is systematically used to deliberate on the decision at hand and all its costs, benefits, and risks. Development of the term The term "due diligence" can be read as "required carefulness" ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
European Commission
The European Commission (EC) is the primary Executive (government), executive arm of the European Union (EU). It operates as a cabinet government, with a number of European Commissioner, members of the Commission (directorial system, informally known as "commissioners") corresponding to two thirds of the number of Member state of the European Union, member states, unless the European Council, acting unanimously, decides to alter this number. The current number of commissioners is 27, including the president. It includes an administrative body of about 32,000 European civil servants. The commission is divided into departments known as Directorate-General, Directorates-General (DGs) that can be likened to departments or Ministry (government department), ministries each headed by a director-general who is responsible to a commissioner. Currently, there is one member per European Union member state, member state, but members are bound by their oath of office to represent the genera ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Letter Of Credit
A letter of credit (LC), also known as a documentary credit or bankers commercial credit, or letter of undertaking (LoU), is a payment mechanism used in international trade to provide an economic guarantee from a creditworthy bank to an exporter of goods. Letters of credit are used extensively in the financing of international trade, when the reliability of contracting parties cannot be readily and easily determined. Its economic effect is to introduce a bank as an underwriter that assumes the counterparty risk of the buyer paying the seller for goods. Typically, after a sales contract has been negotiated, and the buyer and seller have agreed that a letter of credit will be used as the method of payment, the ''applicant'' will contact a bank to ask for a letter of credit to be issued. Once the ''issuing bank'' has assessed the buyer's credit risk, it will issue the letter of credit, meaning that it will provide a promise to pay the seller upon presentation of certain docum ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Financial Audit
A financial audit is conducted to provide an opinion whether "financial statements" (the information is verified to the extent of reasonable assurance granted) are stated in accordance with specified criteria. Normally, the criteria are international accounting standards, although auditors may conduct audits of financial statements prepared using the cash basis or some other basis of accounting appropriate for the organization. In providing an opinion whether financial statements are fairly stated in accordance with accounting standards, the auditor gathers evidence to determine whether the statements contain material errors or other misstatements.Arens, Elder, Beasley; Auditing and Assurance Services; 14th Edition; Prentice Hall; 2012 Overview The audit opinion is intended to provide reasonable assurance, but not absolute assurance, that the financial statements are presented fairly, in all material respects, and/or give a true and fair view in accordance with the financial rep ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Negative Assurance
Negative assurance within accounting ethics Accounting ethics is primarily a field of applied ethics and is part of business ethics and human ethics, the study of moral values and judgments as they apply to accountancy. It is an example of professional ethics. Accounting was introduced b ... (also known as limited assurance), is a method used by the Certified Public Accountant to assure various parties, such as bankers and stockbrokers, that financial data under review by them is reasonable. Negative assurance tells the data user that nothing has come to the CPA's attention of an adverse nature or character regarding the financial data reviewed. Accounting This type of assurance is normally given to investment bankers and the SEC when the financial data are being used for stock and bond issuance. In addition, this assurance is given whenever a CPA is asked to comment on financial statements upon which a previous Audit Opinion has been rendered. (This type of assurance is una ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
