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REVISED PROBLEM 13-42

ACC 650 - Management Accounting

Megatronics Corporation, a massive retailer of electronic products, is organized in four separate divisions.
The four divisional managers are evaluated at year-end, and bonuses are awarded based on ROI.
Last year, the company as a whole produced a 13 percent return on its investment.
During the past week, management of the company’s Northeast Division was approached about the
possibility of buying a competitor that had decided to redirect its retail activities. (If the competitor is
acquired, it will be acquired at its book value.) The data that follow relate to recent performance of the
Northeast Division and the competitor:

Management has determined that in order to upgrade the competitor to Megatronics’ standards, an
additional $275,000 of invested capital would be needed.

REQUIRED:

2. What is the likely reaction of divisional management toward the acquisition? Why?

. Put yourself in the shoes of the CEO of Mattel in 2008. How would you handle the issues Mattel faced in 2008 as it pertains to the product recalls?

Two important issues in corporate governance are (1) the rules that cover firing a CEO and (2) board members are compensated appropriately. True False

How does the topic executive compensation inequality relate to the American International Group (AIG) Bonus Fiasco? Define CEO compensation inequality?

For the shareholders of target firms with CEO getting close to retirement, do they suffer lower takeover premium and deal announcement returns in general? Explain.

Imagine you are CEO of a local hospital. Which policies and procedures would you develop and deploy in order to facilitate superior strategy execution?

Review the provisions of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 to address the accounting scandals in the late 1990s and early 2000s (Enron, WorldCom, etc.)BELOW:

Identify the provisions that you believe made the most significant impact. What other provisions could have been included in the Act to strengthen the responsible stewardship and integrity of the accounting profession? Conversely, what existing provisions in the Act do you believe (if any) are unnecessary or over-regulate the profession?

As a result of corporate accounting scandals, such as those at Enron and WorldCom, the U.S. Congress enacted the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (SOX). The purpose of SOX is to restore trust in publicly traded corporations, their management, their financial statements, and their auditors. SOX enhances internal control and financial reporting requirements and establishes new regulatory requirements for publicly traded companies and their independent auditors. Publicly traded companies have spent millions of dollars upgrading their internal controls and accounting systems to comply with SOX regulations.

As shown in Exhibit 1-10, SOX requires the company’s CEO and CFO to assume responsibility for their company’s financial statements and disclosures. The CEO and CFO must certify that the financial statements and disclosures fairly present, in all material respects, the operations and financial condition of the company. Additionally, they must accept responsibility for establishing and maintaining an adequate internal control structure and procedures for financial reporting. The company must have its internal controls and financial reporting procedures assessed annually.

Some Important Features of SOX

SOX also requires audit committee members to be independent; that is, they may not receive any consulting or advisory fees from the company other than for their service on the board of directors. In addition, at least one of the members should be a financial expert. The audit committee oversees not only the internal audit function but also the company’s audit by independent CPAs.

To ensure that CPA firms maintain independence from their client company, SOX does not allow CPA firms to provide certain nonaudit services (such as bookkeeping and financial information systems design) to companies during the same period of time in which they are providing audit services. If a company wants to obtain such services from a CPA firm, it must hire a different firm to do the nonaudit work. Tax services may be provided by the same CPA firm if pre-approved by the audit committee. The audit partner must rotate off the audit engagement every five years, and the audit firm must undergo quality reviews every one to three years.

SOX also increases the penalties for white-collar crimes such as corporate fraud. These penalties include both monetary fines and substantial imprisonment. For example, knowingly destroying or creating documents to “impede, obstruct, or influence” any federal investigation can result in up to 20 years of imprisonment.

SOX also contains a “clawback” provision in which previously paid CEO’s and CFO’s incentive-based compensation can be recovered if the financial statements were misstated due to misconduct. The Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010 further strengthens the clawback rules, such that firms must recover all incentive compensation paid to any current or former executive, in the three years preceding the restatement, if that compensation would not have been paid under the restated financial statements. In other words, executives will not be allowed to profit from misstated financial statements, even if the misstatement was not due to misconduct.

University Printers has two service departments (Maintenance and Personnel) and two operating departments (Printing and Developing). Management has decided to allocate maintenance costs on the basis of machine-hours in each department and personnel costs on the basis of labor-hours worked by the employees in each.

The following data appear in the company records for the current period:

Required:

Allocate the service department costs using the reciprocal method. (Matrix algebra is not required because there are only two service departments.) (Negative amounts should be indicated by a minus sign. Do not round intermediate calculations. Round your final answers to the nearest whole dollar amounts.)

University Printers has two service departments (Maintenance and Personnel) and two operating departments (Printing and Developing). Management has decided to allocate maintenance costs on the basis of machine-hours in each department and personnel costs on the basis of labor-hours worked by the employees in each.

The following data appear in the company records for the current period:

Required:

Allocate the service department costs using the reciprocal method. (Matrix algebra is not required because there are only two service departments.) (Negative amounts should be indicated by a minus sign. Do not round intermediate calculations. Round your final answers to the nearest whole dollar amounts.)