... the pyramid of financial ratios as return on equity (ROE), return on investment (ROI) and shareholder value to help them better manage their growing business empire. This resulted in many companies started to use these techniques. Accounting historians like Geoffrey Chandler and H. Thomas Johnson report that most of the accounting concepts still in use today had been developed by the 1920s. Professionals such as senior managers, analysts and shareholders have traditionally tracked key financial indicators to measure the progress of a business. These have and still provide companies with a valuable means of summarising and evaluating business achievement through use of traditional ratios which allows for three types of comparison for a company: (1) The firm's current performance with its past performance, (2) with the ratios of other companies or with industry averages, (3) with 'general rules of thumb' or benchmark. (Lev and Sunder 69). These comparisons ...

See this essay or coursework document in full right now