One answer is Ford 2000, an ambitious corporate reorganisation, drawn up in 1994 with the aim of globalising the company's engineering and design.

ECONOMIST: Ford in Europe

The banks are so keen to avoid write-offs that they often approve unsound corporate reorganisation plans and unrealistic estimates of profits, according to Yang Sung Tae, a Seoul bankruptcy-court judge.

ECONOMIST: South Korean bankruptcy

Mr Buffett is especially critical of another way of dampening current profits to the benefit of future ones: restructuring charges (the costs, taken in one go, of a corporate reorganisation).

ECONOMIST: American profits