Thread regarding Weatherford International Ltd. layoffs

Most big U.S. companies play this game of not paying the vendor the last month of the quarter, this is the first time that we are not paying the entire quarter. I don't think its ethical, it harms small or private businesses, and at the end of the day has no real net benefit. The theory is that we conserve cash, but it is just a shell game, that equates to debt (something WTF has a lot of). Ever order should be in JDE so there that would show up on our balance sheet. If we take receipt in JDE then it should show as an account payable. If purchases are not received in JDE timely when we take possession then we are starting to violate sox rules. Purchasing on p cards shows up immediately as debt, so there is no big sox violation there. The bigger problem with buying on p cards is that it can be a work around to the purchasing controls that were put in place. Sometimes the work around is out of necessity and other times it is because people are choosing not to understand the situation we are in. We should be consuming all the inventory and consumables we have before we buy more and then try not to stock as much. The inventory controls make sense, the problem is that they will be forgotten once things pick up again and this will be repeated. This is driven by the bigger problem of our corporate structure and misaligned business, we talk one Weatheford, but we don't act or manage that way. another big problem is that a lot of us have companies holding inventory for us. We are bound by contract to buy this inventory, but we don't have purchase orders for the entire value the vendor is holding. This equates to unreported debt. It could violate sox rules, but more importantly it could kill our stock price if all of a sudden we had to write on $250M more debt (accounts payable), and potentially pay fines for sox violations. Saving cash makes senses. It doesn't matter if it is because of the chance we are going bankrupt, or just to have money in the bank to pay our bills while oil prices are down and we are not making money (there's probably about 6,000 ex WTF employees facing the same dilema right now). PS, for those that don't know sox is the accounting rules implemented after Enron to prevent another Enron; fines can be harsh and severe consequences for guys like Bernie. The bad thing is that Bernard nay not even be aware of some of these risks because they were put in place by people doing work arounds or out of ignorance of accounting rules while trying to do what they thought was a good business decision.