Albert J. Meyer was a forensic accountant and investor who is credited with uncovering fraud at the Foundation for New Era Philanthropy, [1] one of the largest ponzi schemes in U.S. history, as well as notable accounting irregularities at several large public companies. [2] Meyer died on February 3, 2022, from lung cancer. [3]
Meyer started his career as a forensic accountant and spent 15 years as an accounting professor, including five years at Spring Arbor University. After leaving academia, Meyer worked as an analyst at Martin Capital Management and at Dallas-based investment manager, David W. Tice & Assoc., Inc. [4] In 2006, he founded Bastiat Capital, a money manager based in Plano, Texas. [5]
Meyer investigated New Era while working as an accounting professor at Spring Arbor University in the mid-1990s. The college was an investor in the foundation. [6] Subsequently, Meyer detected accounting irregularities at Tyco International in 1999, [4] which ultimately led to the conviction and imprisonment of CEO Dennis Kozlowski. He also brought to light accounting issues at Coca-Cola [7] and Enron. [5]
Coca-Cola, or Coke, is a cola soft drink manufactured by the Coca-Cola Company. In 2013, Coke products were sold in over 200 countries worldwide, with consumers drinking more than 1.8 billion company beverage servings each day. Coca-Cola ranked No. 94 in the 2024 Fortune 500 list of the largest United States corporations by revenue. Based on Interbrand's "best global brand" study of 2023, Coca-Cola was the world's sixth most valuable brand.
Pepsi is a carbonated soft drink with a cola flavor, manufactured by PepsiCo. As of 2023, Pepsi is the second most valuable soft drink brand worldwide behind Coca-Cola; the two share a long-standing rivalry in what has been called the "cola wars".
"I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing (In Perfect Harmony)" is a pop song (originally known as "True Love and Apple Pie") by British hit songwriters Roger Cook and Roger Greenaway, and sung by Susan Shirley.
John Sculley III is an American businessman, entrepreneur and investor in high-tech startups. Sculley was vice-president (1970–1977) and president of PepsiCo (1977–1983), until he became chief executive officer (CEO) of Apple Inc. on April 8, 1983, a position he held until leaving on October 15, 1993. In 1987, Sculley was named Silicon Valley's top-paid executive, with an annual salary of US$10.2 million.
The Coca-Cola Company's formula for Coca-Cola syrup, which bottlers combine with carbonated water to create the company's flagship cola soft drink, is a closely guarded trade secret. Company founder Asa Candler initiated the veil of secrecy that surrounds the formula in 1891 as a publicity, marketing, and intellectual property protection strategy. While several recipes, each purporting to be the authentic formula, have been published, the company maintains that the actual formula remains a secret, known only to a very few select employees.
New Coke was the unofficial name of a reformulation of the soft drink Coca-Cola, introduced by the Coca-Cola Company in April 1985. It was renamed Coke II in 1990, and discontinued in July 2002.
Tyco International plc was a security systems company incorporated in the Republic of Ireland, with operational headquarters in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. Tyco International was composed of two major business segments: security solutions and fire protection.
Tab was a diet cola soft drink produced and distributed by The Coca-Cola Company, introduced in 1963 and discontinued in 2020. The company's first diet drink, Tab was popular among some people throughout the 1960s and 1970s as an alternative to Coca-Cola. Several variations were made, including a number of fruit-flavored, root beer, and ginger ale versions. Caffeine-free and clear variations were released in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
Virgin Cola was a carbonated cola soft drink, launched in 1994. In 2009, it was discontinued in the United Kingdom, and in 2014 it was stopped being made by its final licensee, in Bangladesh.
The Coca-Cola Company is an American multinational corporation founded in 1892. It manufactures, sells and markets soft drinks including Coca-Cola, other non-alcoholic beverage concentrates and syrups, and alcoholic beverages. Its stock is listed on the New York Stock Exchange and is a component of the DJIA and the S&P 500 and S&P 100 indexes.
Odwalla Inc. is an American health food company based in Dinuba, California. Founded in Santa Cruz, California in 1980 and formerly headquartered in Half Moon Bay, California from 1995 to 2020, the company's product lines include fruit juices, smoothies, soy milk, bottled water, organic beverages, and several types of energy bars known as "food bars".
Coca-Cola HBC AG also known as Coca-Cola Hellenic Bottling Company or just Coca-Cola Hellenic is the world's third-largest Coca-Cola anchor bottler in terms of volume with sales of more than 2 billion unit cases. Coca-Cola HBC's shares are primarily listed on the London Stock Exchange with a secondary listing on the Athens Stock Exchange. The company is a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index. Coca-Cola HBC has been named the industry leader among beverage companies in the 2014 Dow Jones Sustainability Index and is also included in the FTSE4Good Index.
Bayes Business School, formerly known as Cass Business School, is the business school of the City, University of London, located in St Luke's, just to the north of the City of London. It was established in 1966, and it is consistently ranked as one of the leading business schools in the United Kingdom.
Coca-Cola Zero Sugar is a diet cola produced by the Coca-Cola Company.
Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room is a 2005 American documentary film based on the best-selling 2003 book of the same name by Fortune reporters Bethany McLean and Peter Elkind, who are credited as writers of the film alongside the director, Alex Gibney. It examines the 2001 collapse of the Enron Corporation, which resulted in criminal trials for several of the company's top executives during the ensuing Enron scandal, and contains a section about the involvement of Enron traders in the 2000-01 California electricity crisis. Archival footage is used alongside new interviews with McLean and Elkind, several former Enron executives and employees, stock analysts, reporters, and former Governor of California Gray Davis.
The Foundation for New Era Philanthropy was a Ponzi scheme that operated from 1989 until its collapse in 1995 after having raised over $500 million from 1100 donors and embezzling $135 million of this. Most of the money was stolen from Christian religious organizations and charities in the Philadelphia, Pennsylvania area. The scheme was publicly discovered by Albert Meyer, an accounting teacher at Spring Arbor College and the auditing firm Coopers & Lybrand working with its client, a local religious college in Los Angeles who suffered no loss in its participation.
Hit is a carbonated fruit-flavored soft drink brand owned by The Coca-Cola Company that is available in Venezuela, and is sold as the Venezuelan counterpart to Coca-Cola's existing Fanta brand.
Urge is a citrus-flavored soft drink produced by Coca-Cola Norway that was first introduced in the country in 1996, and later on was released in Denmark and Sweden. It is the predecessor of the American soft drink Surge, which was introduced in the US in 1997. Urge was discontinued in Denmark and Sweden in 2001. In Norway, Urge sales increased greatly over the years reaching a market share near 10% despite receiving no marketing since its initial launch.
Since its invention by John Stith Pemberton in 1886, criticisms of Coca-Cola as a product, and of the business practices of The Coca-Cola Company, have been significant. The Coca-Cola Company is the largest soft drink company in the world, distributing over 500 different products. Since the early 2000s, the criticism of the use of Coca-Cola products, as well as the company itself, escalated, with criticism leveled at the company over health effects, environmental issues, animal testing, economic business practices and employee issues. The Coca-Cola Company has been faced with multiple lawsuits concerning the various criticisms.
Accounting scandals are business scandals which arise from intentional manipulation of financial statements with the disclosure of financial misdeeds by trusted executives of corporations or governments. Such misdeeds typically involve complex methods for misusing or misdirecting funds, overstating revenues, understating expenses, overstating the value of corporate assets, or underreporting the existence of liabilities; these can be detected either manually, or by the means of deep learning. It involves an employee, account, or corporation itself and is misleading to investors and shareholders.