Case 7: Waste Management (1997)

• Prof. Dr. Klaus Henselmann
• Dr. Stefan Hofmann

The Waste Management case provides an anatomy of an accounting scandal that is far more than just a financial history lesson. It portrays a multiyear effort to inflate reported profits at Waste Management, Inc. (WMI), using fraudulent accounting practices that allowed the company to hide about USD 1.7 billion in expenses from 1992 through part of 1997. It also portrays an accounting fraud perpetrated by the highest-ranking officers at WMI. As the scheme unravelled in 1997, the news sent WMI’s stock value tumbling by more than one third, dropping from once USD 56 to as low as USD 13. Shareholders lost more than USD 6 billion in the market value of their investments.

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