Now in a lot of European countries laying off personnel is either a prohibitively expensive undertaking or can be done more cheaply if it can be proven that it is for reasons of "economic survival".

In some countries company management actually has to appear in court beforehand and in others they have to appear only as a result of legal action of employees or trade unions after being sacked or made redundant.

Either way, what I would like to explore is whether in the current crisis the accountants who have for years struggle with "window dressing" the year-end accounts will actually do a double whammy and clear out the accumulated "mayonnaise" of the accounts along with the deadwood personnel by publishing worse figures ? Call it an "accounting undressing" if you please!

For those unfamiliar with the window dressing concept this process can be readily explained in three steps: (1) How to we play with the figures in order to show our results in the best light; (2) What changes need to be done and are they legal; (3) Re-manipulation in order to provide a plausible path from last years "window dressed" figures to the current ones.

As this process builds year-after-year step (3) becomes increasingly challenging so a "crisis", merger or re-structuring is always taken as a welcome opportunity to level the playing field from time to time and sweep the slate clean. Usually under a headings such as "miscellaneous /extraordinary one-off operating costs" or similar.

I hereby declare open season for spotting corporate candidates of such a travesty....