ARDMORE, Pa., July 22, 2002 (PRIMEZONE) -- Gregory FCA, the Philadelphia area's largest investor and public relations agency and publisher of the electronic IR Reporter, is staging a writing contest commemorating the largest bankruptcy in U.S. history (WorldCom), this year's crisis in market confidence and all the pervasive prevarication that made it possible.
Entrants should pick their favorite infamous public company -- as targeted by the Securities and Exchange Commission, the media or your own shrinking 401(K) statement -- and rewrite the company's last annual earnings release (the one right before the big shoe dropped) in the words of the contestant's favorite author.
Successful entrants will capture the voice of their favorite author (see samples below), as well as foreshadow the issue related to the company, whether it is inflated revenue; improper expense recognition and amortization; off-balance sheet transactions; two-way trades; insider stock transactions or any of the other esoteric crimes that are now part of the current business lexicon.
First prize is $500. Second prize is $250. Third prize is $100. The contest is open to those who would rather laugh than cry, those who are sick of lies but still love fiction, those fleeced investors who now need the money, the soon-to-be unemployed and all of us who just can't take another hideous headline.
It is not open to employees of Gregory FCA, other communications professionals, journalists or certain securities analysts who have an unfair advantage, having already written fiction on behalf of these companies.
To stimulate thought, what follows are two rather pedestrian fictional lead paragraphs related to WorldCom, its former CEO Bernie Ebbers and the issue of unrecorded or improperly recorded expenses.
WorldCom Release
Hemingway:
It was harvest in Mississippi. Ebbers squinted in the sun off across the fields and out onto the world where the past and the future were one and true.
All that the harvest had cost him in one year was eternal and stretched away over the horizon. All that mattered, the thing that allowed his run with the bulls, was this year's bounty and so he announced WorldCom net income of...
Faulkner:
Ebbers, like all the grizzled male Ebbers before him, had in him that certainness and had added a richness to that certainness, and then added a faith to that richness that a dime earned and then spent was still there comfortable in his pocket, which separated him from all the previous Ebbers and all the Ebbers that would come after him and many who were not Ebbers at all but had shared in the faith, if not the richness, and had now as a certainty only the feeling of disquiet of the stomach when Ebbers said that WorldCom net income for the year was...
Entries should be limited to two pages, double-spaced (400 to 600 words). No numbers or tables should be included as they are irrelevant now, and were then.
All entries should be e-mailed to bruce@gregoryfca.com. All entries become the property of Gregory FCA and may be reprinted without compensation in any of the company's publications or in any other publication. Deadline for entries is midnight, Friday, August 9, 2002.