CHAPTER 2

Corporate Financial Statements

Four general purpose financial statements issued by publicly owned corporations were identified in Chapter 1: balance sheet, income statement, statement of cash flows, and statement of retained earnings. This chapter revisits these publicly available reports in greater detail.

The Balance Sheet

The balance sheet is a snapshot of a corporation’s financial position at a specific point in time. In fact, balance sheets are often referred to as statements of financial position. A corporation’s financial position refers to its assets and the claims to those assets by creditors and shareholders. A balance sheet is aptly named, because the relationship among its elements can be expressed as a rudimentary formula ...

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