It doesn’t seem all that long ago that Xerox was one of the most admired companies around.  A creative innovator that had single-handedly given birth to a whole new industry, Xerox was also renowned for the ongoing visionary nature of its research and development, the quality of its people and the way they were managed, and on and on through a seemingly unending stream of accolades.

But shorlty after the turn of the millenium, Xerox agreed to pay the Securities and Exchange Commission $10 million--then the largest fine ever paid by a public company for a financial reporting violation--and restate five years’ worth of financial “results” that turned out to reflect more than just a small amount of wishful thinking.  Xerox had been charged with improperly claiming more than $2 billion in revenue from equipment leases between 1997 and 2001 that was not truly in hand.