Securities and Obscurities

During the 1960s and 1970s a remarkable series of books was produced by academic staff in the field of accounting at the University of Sydney.

It was a period when academic research was largely analytical rather than empirically–based. For the most part, the interests of academics at Sydney were largely directed at questioning the status quo – either in the way accounting or auditing was practiced, or in the conventional wisdom expressed in text books of the time.

The Sydney Accounting Classics series reflects the diversity of interests of the 'Sydney school' at that time. It also recognises the tremendous impact of the foundation professor of accounting, R.J. Chambers. This reprint series ensures that the ideas developed during this period remain available to new generations of scholars and researchers.

The Sydney Accounting Classics series is an intiative of the Accounting Foundation, in association with Sydney University Press.

Securities and Obscurities:
In this book Chambers presents examples of financial practices in the UK, US, Canada and Australia and exposes the deficiencies in reported financial information. Chambers intended the work to be controversial. It continued his contention that precise definitions of accounting terms needed to be agreed upon, to ensure that investors, company directors, auditors and accountants were talking about the same things.

Raymond J. Chambers was the foundation chair of accounting at the University of Sydney from 1960 until his retirement in 1983. He was widely acknowledged as one of the leading academic contributors to the study of accounting. He passed away in 1999.

Acknowledgements
Foreword to Series
Preface

1. Company limited
2. The loose rein of the law
3. Truth in accounting
4. What every intelligent investor needs to know
5. The lore of financial statements
6. What is it worth?
7. Higgledy piggledy disclosure
8. Cooking the books
9. From the outside looking in
10. ‘Will you walk into my parlour?’
11. Watchdogs, bloodhounds, et al.
12. Hot seat in the boardroom
13. The failed and the fooled
14. Shifty prices and funny money
15. Away with stock market pollution!
16. Rx: in the public interest and for the protection of investors

List of references
Index of companies
General index