The crux came with the profit and loss account.

ECONOMIST: Idea

In this respect, when the original deed was made in 1986, amended in 1993 and replaced in 1997, two fundamental legal and accounting principles applied: that a profit and loss account was concerned with ordinary activities before taxation, and that only profits realised at the balance sheet date could lawfully be included in the profit and loss account.

BBC: Lloyds Banking Group wins ?3.5m charity appeal

Worst of all, from the banks' point of view, these swings would have to be recognised in the profit-and-loss account for the year.

ECONOMIST: Accounting

Options should be expensed in the profit-and-loss account in the year they are granted.

FORBES: The way to pay a chief executive

The effects of not recording options on the profit-and-loss account are huge.

ECONOMIST: A survey of Corporate Finance

The main argument advanced for not putting options into the profit-and-loss account is perfectly simple: to do so would cost American companies too much.

ECONOMIST: A survey of Corporate Finance

Under current accounting rules most companies do not report the full costs of pension provision in their profit and loss account.

ECONOMIST: The companies with the biggest holes in their pension funds

It was the gang's business-like organisation that proved their undoing, when police found spreadsheets detailing each transaction, profit and loss account ledgers and notes about laundered money.

BBC: Operation Beath