Don’t mind if Uncle Sam is up in your biznass 24/7? Thrive in a thankless atmosphere? KPMG is your favorite Big 4 firm? We know that you don’t sleep. Job is yours.
The bastions of financial responsibility at Citigroup have announced a new CFO, the second in four months. The lucky SOB is John Gerspach who got the bump from Controller. Best of luck John. Now how about those dividend checks?
Citigroup Names Gerspach CFO; Kelly Shifted to Strategy Role [Bloomberg]
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But Does She Get a Key to the Bathroom?
One of the best things about making partner is that, if you’re lucky, you’ll end up on a board of directors someday. You get a nice chunk of change for sitting in some meetings pretending like you’re responsible for a company. Pretty simple.
Just like Sue James, a former E&Y partner. She was introduced as one of the new directors at Yahoo! The 8-K filed by Yahoo lays out her comp:
Ms. James will participate in the current director compensation arrangements applicable to non-employee directors. Under the terms of those arrangements, Ms. James will receive an annual retainer of $80,000 for her service on the Board, an additional annual retainer of $35,000 for serving as Chair of the Audit Committee of the Board, and will participate in Yahoo!’s other compensation programs for its non-employee directors. In addition, Ms. James is expected to receive in February, subject to Board approval, a grant of restricted stock units under the Company’s 1996 Directors’ Stock Plan with the number of such units to be determined by the Board at the time of the grant
Not too shabby. The filing doesn’t outline her rights to the facilities but for that kind of money she could, at the very least, arrange to have a rent-a-john parked outside Yahoo! HQ.
Footnotes: All the Money is in DC; The Pentagon Sucks At Money Management; The SEC’s Latest Whistleblower Report Is Here | 11.18.13
A Biglaw partner — who kinda sorta specializes in finance — lost $19.5 million, or […]
Auditors, The PCAOB Still Doesn’t Think Too Highly of the Job You’re Doing
The PCAOB is considering telling auditors how to do their jobs issuing guidance on communication with audit committees and a new auditing standard on related parties, according to Compliance Week. Not to worry though, they’re going to ask the bigwigs on the Standing Advisory Group for their $0.02:
The PCAOB also plans to bounce some ideas off the advisory group for a new standard to govern how auditor should communicate with audit committees, in part to establish some new guidance regarding communication about management judgments and estimates. According to a briefing paper provided to SAG members, PCAOB is looking for ideas on how to get past boilerplate dialogue to achieve more effective, robust communications between auditors and audit committees.
Auditors? Boilerplate dialogue? Is the PCAOB questioning your ability to ask substantive questions? For shame. Obviously Peekatboobs will be able to develop much better, non-boilerplate questions than you and then you’ll be required to ask those questions of the audit committee. That’ll get the job done.
Likewise, auditors, you’ve simply dropped the ball on related parties since, “financial relationships with related parties have proved important in recent corporate scandals, and the board’s inspection and enforcement actions suggest some auditors aren’t skeptical enough when evaluating such relationships and transactions.”
The infinite wisdom of the PCAOB is clearly on display here. Auditors, it’s going to become necessary that your skepticism is going to reach a physical level or at least the threat of such. Your skepticism in words and on paper is simply not getting the job done.
You’ll have to get Chuck Liddell to beat some people down or simply laying heat out on the conference table during discussions to get your point across, otherwise, clients are going to just keep taking advantage of you.
This will be the plan until the next financial crisis of course when the PCAOB will assess that the questions and methods developed now turn out to be boilerplate and ineffective and it’ll be back to the drawing board again. Don’t get too comfortable.
PCAOB Considers Rules on Communication, Related Parties [Compliance Week]