Litigation Services Handbook: The Role of the Financial Expert

The 2005 Cumulative Supplement includes a new chapter entitled Corporate Scandals: The Accounting Underpinnings. This chapter examines the earnings management fundamentals behind current corporate scandals. It includes a discussion of the current financial reporting environment and auditor responsibilities and methods used to detect fraud.

About the Author :
Roman L. Weil, PhD, CMA, CPA, is V. Duane Rath Professor of Accounting at the Graduate School of Business of the University of Chicago. He received his BA in economics and mathematics from Yale University in 1962. He received his MS in industrial administration in 1965 and PhD in economics in 1966, both from Carnegie-Mellon University. He joined the faculty at the University of Chicago in 1965, where he has held positions in Mathematical Economics, Management and Information Sciences, Accounting, and in the law school. He directs the University's Directors' College and co-founded (now co-directs) the Chicago/Stanford/Wharton Directors' Consortium, which trains corporate board members to do their jobs better; his own specialty in that training focuses on financial literacy. He has been a CPA in Illinois since 1973 and a CMA since 1974. He has served on the faculties of the Georgia Institute of Technology, New York University Law School, and Stanford University in its Graduate School of Business, Economics Department, and Law School. At Stanford, he has, since its inception, organized the sessions at Directors' College on Audit Committee duties. He has served on the Board of Academic Advisors of the U.S. Business School in Prague and has taught there. He has served on the accrediting committee of the American Association of Collegiate Schools of Business. Peter B. Frank is Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer of Daymon, Worldwide Associates, Inc., in Stamford, Connecticut. He is a retired PricewaterhouseCoopers partner, where he served as a member of its global leadership and as its Global Risk Management Partner. Prior to the merger with Coopers & Lybrand, Mr. Frank was a Vice Chairman of Price Waterhouse. Mr. Frank spent the bulk of his professional career leading the Price Waterhouse dispute analysis, bankruptcy, and business turnaround practice. He served on that firm's Policy Board (Board of Directors) and its Management Committee. For more than 30 years, Mr. Frank has acted as a management consultant and expert witness for litigation, government, and industrial clients. Michael J. Wagner earned his undergraduate degree in engineering from the University of Santa Clara in 1969, his MBA from UCLA in 1971, and his JD degree from Loyola University at Los Angeles in 1975. He is a licensed attorney and CPA in the state of California.