单选题 Reading the footnotes to a company's financial statements and the Management Discussion & Analysis is least likely to help an analyst determine: A. how well the financial statements reflect the company's true performance. B. in what ways he needs to adjust the data for his own analysis. C. the detailed information that underlies the company's accounting system.
【正确答案】 C
【答案解析】An analyst doesn't have access to the detailed information that flows through a company's accounting system, but only sees its end product, the financial statements. The analyst needs to understand the various accruals, adjustments, and management assumptions that went into the financial statements. Much of this is often explained in the footnotes to the statements and in Management's Discussion and Analysis, which is why it is crucial for an analyst to review these parts of the presentation. With this information, the analyst can better judge how well the financial statements reflect the company's true performance, and in what ways he needs to adjust the data for his own analysis.