Programming note: Most of you are working so you probably don’t realize it but today is technically a holiday, therefore we will resume The Daily Grind on Monday and run a shorter editorial schedule today. Caleb returns to your loving embrace Monday morning, so thanks to all of you for a great week, it’s been fun. – AG
PwC’s LGBT employees coming to Dallas for summit [Dallas Voice]
Human Rights Campaign sponsor PricewaterhouseCoopers is holding a two-day diversity summit for members of its LGBT resource group at the Joule Hotel in Downtown Dallas beginning Friday, Nov. 11, in conjunction with Black Tie Dinner set for Saturday night.
Financial Scandal Fans Never Had It So Good: Jonathan Weil [Bloomberg]
If you happen to be a connoisseur of accounting scandals, then the past month or so has been about as good as it gets, capped by the unfolding disaster at Olympus Corp. (7733) On the flip side, if you work as an auditor for a big accounting firm, it just got that much harder to make the case that society should value your services.
Green Mountain’s Landslide [WSJ]
Consider Green Mountain Coffee Roasters, whose shares tumbled 39% after the single-serving coffee company said revenue increased “only” 91% against expectations of around 100%. The trouble: While the shortfall was modest, many Green Mountain investors simply can’t remember being disappointed. And the perfect performance had led them always to give Green Mountain the benefit of the doubt.
Distortions In Baffling Financial Statements [NYT]
This has been a bad year for banks. With sovereign debt no longer trusted and widespread fears of a new recession in Europe, share prices of banks have fallen sharply. But in some cases, the financial statements look ever so much rosier. JPMorgan Chase reported net income of $15.3 billion during the first three quarters of this year, 22 percent higher than in the period a year earlier and a record for the first nine months of any year. There are explanations for that — and JPMorgan Chase deserves praise for calling attention to reasons to think the numbers are misleading. But at base the problem is a simple one: Accounting for financial institutions is a mess.
Audit: IRS responded well to deadly Austin incident [The Hill]
The IRS responded competently and efficiently after a man flew a plane into Austin, Texas, offices of the agency, a new report found. The Treasury Department’s inspector general for tax administration found that the IRS was able to resume work in Austin within 18 days of the February 2010 incident, and had ensured that taxpayer data and IRS employees were protected.
FASB Chairman Adds Two Agenda Projects to Improve Financial Reporting by Not-for-Profit Organizations [MarketWatch]
Leslie F. Seidman, chairman of the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB), today announced the addition of two agenda projects–a standard-setting project and a research project–intended to improve financial reporting of not-for-profit organizations. The objectives of these projects encompass suggestions received by the Board from its Not-for-Profit Advisory Committee at the Committee’s September 2011 meeting.
Ex-accountants ‘drained tax avoidance scheme of cash’ [The Guardian]
Two former Vantis accountants and ex-tax officials faked documents to siphon money out of tax avoidance schemes marketed to well-known and wealthy individuals, a court heard. Robert “Roy” Faichney and David Perrin, alongside their wives Shirley Faichney and Nicola Perrin, manufactured a series of bogus documents to allow the payment of huge sums from the companies involved in the scheme to a Jersey trust, it was alleged.
