NEWS that headline earnings at Accentuate, the construction, flooring and chemicals company, are expected to be between 6.2c and 6.4c a share for the 12 months ended-June 2016 was well-received by investors. On Monday, the share price, which has been increasing steadily for most of the year, reached a record high of R1. Shareholders have obviously decided to forget all about Accentuate’s recent history and buy into management’s positive outlook. They will be helped in this approach by the accounting treatment of the massive fraud perpetrated on the company over the 10 years to the end of financial 2015, which has been relegated to deep history. During that 10 years, the financial director of Accentuate’s most profitable division, Floorworx, allegedly defrauded the company of R70m. A criminal case has been opened. Amazingly, the fraud was not revealed as a result of any discrepancies in the company’s accounts or by its auditors, but because someone noticed the director’s lifestyle se...
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