May 10, 2010—Based on the 10-Q that Philip Morris International, Inc. (PM) filed last Friday, we're betting that its lawyers have been working some long hours lately. The 75-page Q discloses lots of information about current litigation, initiatives to ban and/or limit ingredients ...

April 27, 2010—Sometimes a company's best move may be to hire a consultant, but that help certainly doesn—t come cheaply. For example, Alcoa, Inc. (AA) just signed an agreement to pay industry veteran Bernt Reitan $125,000 for —Consultant's expertise and knowledge of aluminum ...

December 10, 2009—From the earliest days of footnoted, we've had something of a soft spot for Krispy Kreme (KKD). Since that post in September 2003, the stock has dropped over 90%. Given this, we tend to pay a bit closer attention to their ...

November 17, 2009—This morning, a certain sub-sector of the financial blogosphere is abuzz over the press release that Overstock.com (OSTK) put out late yesterday announcing that they had fired its outside auditor, who had just been hired earlier this year, and were filing an "unreviewed" ...

November 11, 2009—Today is Veteran's Day, which means that the SEC (and all federal offices) are closed, even though the markets are open. Given that Monday was a big deadline for (mostly) third quarter Qs, it gives us a chance to play catch up and check in ...

November 9, 2009—It's Q season and footnoted regulars know what that means -- lots of crazy things buried deep in the filings. Sonya, Kristen and myself spent much of the weekend in our waders working our way through all sorts of filings. Some of the ...

November 6, 2009—Back in June, CBS (CBS) announced that its CFO, Fred Reynolds, planned to retire in mid-August. That same day, the company announced that Joseph Ianniello would be taking over as CFO on July 20. Now Ianniello was no novice. He had been ...

November 3, 2009—Late yesterday, Peet's Coffee & Tea (PEET), my personal favorite when it comes to caffeine delivery devices, announced that it was buying Diedrich's Coffee (DDRX) for $213 million. Coincidentally, Diedrich's filed what's likely to be its last 10-Q yesterday. But what's surprising was the ...

August 12, 2009—As we've been noting for much of the past week, Monday was a big deadline for 10-Qs. While we're still digging through the stacks of filings, we've started paying closer attention to those companies that haven't managed to get their Qs in ...

August 3, 2009—Friends of mine who live on the Upper West Side of Manhattan routinely complain about how much it costs to park their car near their house: over $500 a month. Since they only really use the car on weekends, they park it ...