1. Discuss the primary reason for the restatement and the impact to the financial results for the company you selected.
Apple Inc. is an American multinational corporation that designs and sells consumer electronics, computer software, and personal computers. The company is best-known for its Macintosh line of computers, the iPod, the iPhone and the iPad.
As of July 2011, Apple has 357 retail stores in ten countries. It is the largest publicly traded company in the world my market capitalization. as well as the largest technology company in the world by revenue and profit. Although Fortune Magazine named them the most admired company in the United States in 2008, Apple has received widespread criticism for its environmental and business practices.
Apple issued a statement stating that the Company would likely need to restate its historical financial statements to record non-cash charges for compensation expense relating to past stock option grants. The Company had not determined the amount of the charges, the resulting tax and accounting impact, or which periods may require restatement. Therefore, the Company filed a Form 8-K stating that the financial statements and all earnings issued by Apple relating to periods beginning on September 29, 2002 should therefore not be relied on. The investigation is still going on so Apple is delaying the filing of its Form 10-Q for the quarter that ended July 1, 2006.

2. Discuss “management” responsibility to the investors and stakeholders for the financial restatement.
Management is responsible for establishing adequate internal control over financial reporting. Management also has to access the effectiveness of the company’s internal control over financial reporting. It is up to management to identify any material weaknesses and include them in their assessment. A material weakness is a control deficiency or combination of control deficiencies that result in more than a remote likelihood that a material misstatement of the annual or interim financial statements will not be prevented or detected.
Anything in a financial restatement has to be assessed and identified by management. They should also communicate with investors and stakeholders any restatements that could possibly take place. If this is not communicated it could result in bad accounting decisions which could, in turn, cause lots of problems for Apple or any other company where this terrible mistake is made.

3. Discuss what changes you would expect the company leadership to make related to internal controls, accounting principles, or other initiatives as a result of the need to restate the financial statements.
As far as the changes that should be made by leadership are concerned, there could be many different reasons for the restatement. It would depend on whether it is because the accountants didn’t understand the accounting guidelines or if they just simply did not follow them. Whatever the situation, company leadership would be expected to make the changes accordingly