When you're beholden to shareholders then you're a slave to the sales department, since they control the shareholder report. They'll drop their pants and make a

When you're beholden to shareholders then you're a slave to the sales department, since they control the shareholder report. They'll drop their pants and make any deal to get those purchase orders in for the monthly/quarterly/annual reports, and clients that know this take advantage of it. It also opens the possibility of deferring sales figures to fudge the numbers, for example sales in 2011 haven't "finalized" so they show up in 2012's reports, but those sales actually happened in 2011. It's effectively kicking the can down the road to buy time to fix whatever the reason sales figures are being deferred.