Compas Poll / Survey

In the week following the WorldCom scandal, the largest accounting scandal to date, Canadian business leaders have experienced a dramatic loss of confidence in the accounting firms servicing publicly traded companies, foresee an extended bear market, and believe that the future will lie with dividend-paying stocks.

Business leaders blame most of all senior management and accounting firms. They assign some blame for the saga of scandal to investment dealers, securities regulators, and governments for privileging capital gains over dividends in tax policy, thereby providing an incentive for accounting irregularities. Few respondents assign much blame to the business press for poor reporting or mutual funds for poor assessment of accounting risk when making their investments.

These are the key findings from the current web-survey of CEOs and other business leaders conducted by COMPAS on behalf of the National Post under sponsorship of the Canadian Chamber of Commerce and CIBC.