This revised edition of Clarke, Dean and Oliver#s provocative book tells why accounting has failed to deliver the truth about a company#s state of affairs or to give warning of its drift towards failure. Well- known corporate collapses from the 1960s to the present day show that little has changed over these decades. The authors balance broad interpretations and recommendations for regulatory reform with intricate case details, insightful analysis of contemporary practices and dissection of the pervading commercial rhetoric. Corporate Collapse includes examinations of the recent HIH, One.Tel, Ansett and Enron debacles and shows that the cult of the individual in media coverage has masked serious endemic problems in the system of reporting financial information. The book is essential reading for professional accountants and auditors, company directors and managers, regulators, corporate lawyers, and investors, and accounting academics and their students. INDICE Part I. Accounting in crisis - a farce to be reckoned with: 1. Chaos in the counting-house; 2. Creative accounting - mind the GAAP. Part II. The 1960s: 3. The corporate 1960s: dubious credit and tangled webs; 4. Reid Murray: the archetypal failure; postscript - Stanley Korman; 5. H. G. Palmer: 'Gilt' by association. Part III. The 1970s: 6. Going for broke in the 1970s; 7. Minsec: decline of a share trader; 8. Cambridge credit: other people's money; 9. Uncoordinated financial strategies at Associated Securities Ltd. Part IV. The 1980s: 10. The 1980s: decade of the deal?; 11. Adsteam on the rocks; 12. Bond Corporation Holdings Ltd (Group): entrepreneurial rise and fall; 13. Westmex Ltd: the security facade of cross guarantees. Part V. The new millennium - life in the farce lane: 14. 2000s and beyond: crisis in accounting and audit; 15. HIH - unfettered hubris. Part VI. Regulatory reforms: 16. Groupthink: Byzantine structures; 17. Groupthink - group therapy: consolidation accounting; 18. Fatal attrition - account