Based on the award-winning City report by UBS Phillips & Drew, this book shows up the methods developed by accountants during the 1980s in order to be able to report continuous growth in earnings per share (ie profit). But accounts drawn up in this way often give an entirely false picture of a company's health, and in fact many of the firms which employed these methods subsequently went bust. The author claims that it is time for attention to refocus on balance sheet movement, dividend potential and above all, cash, if readers and investors are to have an accurate picture of how companies are really performing.