St Andrews Ethics Case

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This memo addresses the issue of St. Andrews Hospital’s debt covenant requiring the company to report cash from operations of $1,000,000 at the end of each year of operations. A debt covenant is an agreement between a company and its creditors to operate within certain limits. The debt covenant not only specifies the numbers that should be met, but also exactly how they should be calculated for the purposes of the debt covenant. The supervisor, Julie Peterson, wants Steve Savage, the controller, to either decrease the accounts receivable balance or increase the accounts payable balance in order to increase the balance of cash from operations by year-end to meet the requirements of the debt covenant. Steve has eliminated the possibility of decreasing accounts receivable because most revenue payments come from slow paying insurance companies. Steve can take Julie’s suggestion and increase the balance in accounts payable by delaying payments of the weekly bills for the last three weeks of the year. Increases in current liability accounts are added to net income on the statement of cash flows because the company has received more in goods than they have paid for, therefore an increase in accounts payable will increase the balance of cash provided by operations and have the desired result. If Steve follows Julie’s suggestion and delays payment of the weekly bills, the creditors will be unhappy. However, the company needs to meet the requirements of the debt covenant and delaying these payments will be necessary to meet those needs. It is a business decision. If the covenant is violated, the bonds will be in default, and a new agreement for the terms of the debt will be renegotiated likely with worse terms. The bond holders will be affected by this decision. This could cause Equity investors to be more aware of the bond covenants and closely monitor the financial

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