Takeovers may also benefit from principal–agent problems associated with top executive compensation. For example, it is fairly easy for a top executive to reduce the price of his/her company's stock – due to information asymmetry. The executive can accelerate accounting of expected expenses, delay accounting of expected revenue, engage in off-balance-sheet transactions to make the company's profitability appear temporarily poorer, or simply promote and report severely conservative (i.e. pessimistic) estimates of future earnings. Such seemingly adverse earnings news will be likely to (at least temporarily) reduce the company's stock price. (This is again due to information asymmetries since it is more common for top executives to do everything they can to window dress their company's earnings forecasts.) There are typically very few legal risks to being 'too conservative' in one's accounting and earnings estimates.