General Electric pays off regulators with bailout money
Posted Aug 5th 2009 3:30PM by Zac BissonnetteZac Bissonnette RSS Feed Filed under: General Electric (GE)
And the madness continues: When General Electric (NYSE: GE) settled SEC securities fraud charges yesterday by paying a fine of $50 million, it was chump change in the context of the volume of federal assistance the company has already received.
"GE bent the accounting rules beyond the breaking point," said Robert Khuzami, Director of the SEC's Division of Enforcement.
"Overly aggressive accounting can distort a company's true financial condition and mislead investors." said David P. Bergers, Director of the SEC's Boston Regional Office. "Every accounting decision at a company should be driven by a desire to get it right, not to achieve a particular business objective. GE misapplied the accounting rules to cast its financial results in a better light." |