Fiscal year

Accounting in a company or an administration is a process that is done in batches of 12 months, resulting in an annual report. This fiscal year can be aligned with the calendar year (start January 1, end December 31) or displaced.

Companies within a group must use the same fiscal year, otherwise it would be possible to move resources within the group to the company that needs them for improving their annual report, so the same resources would be counted more than once. In Sweden, this legislation was not yet introduced in the early 1930s, which allowed [Ivar Kreuger]? to manipulate the accounting of his group of match making industries (today [Swedish Match]?) in a wild speculation-based economy that ended with his suicide in 1932, involving [J.P. Morgan]? and Ericsson.