Category: ANR

Nokia, Microsoft Join Forces to Challenge Apple, Google [Bloomberg]
Nokia Oyj, the world’s biggest maker of mobile phones, said it’s forming a software partnership with Microsoft Corp., betting that together the two companies can challenge Google Inc. and Apple Inc. Nokia fell as much asgest drop in a almost 10 months, after its plan to make Microsoft’s Windows its primary software was seen as a sign of the extent of its troubles taking on Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android platforms. “It’s a clear admission that Nokia’s own platform strategy has faltered,” said Ben Wood, a London-based analyst with CCS Insight. “Microsoft is the big winner in this deal, but there are no silver bullets for either company given strength of iPhone and Android.”

Seven Networking Event No-Nos [FINS]
Large-scale job-search networking events can help you bolster your rolodex and make connections that can land you a job. Coming across as both professional and engaging to those new contacts, however, isn’t as simple as it may seem.

Obama’s Fannie, Freddie plan may boost mortgage rates [WaPo]
The Obama administration proposed raising fees for borrowers and requiring large down-payments for home loans as part of a long-term effort to reduce the government’s outsized footprint in the housing market, but warned that these moves could increase mortgage rates and potentially reduce the availability of the 30-year fixed rate mortgage, a mainstay of American housing for decades.

End of the road for ‘American Idol’ CPA [CPA Success]
I’m devastated. On the bright side, I don’t have to worry about listening to Steven Tyler feign insults about lackluster performances anymore. As for Steve, he’ll always have auditing.

Excel FAQs: Hours and minutes [AWUK]
News you can use.

Upload Data to Aid Form [WSJ]
And a little more, for any of you filling out a FAFSA.

British Pubs Argue for Freeze in Beer Duty [Tax Foundation]
Brits don’t like their pints taxed. Just like us!

A Wells Fargo Exit Puzzles [WSJ]
The circumstances surrounding Mr. Atkins’s Tuesday departure were as puzzling to employees and regulators as they were for analysts and investors. In a news release about Mr. Atkins’s exit, the company said only that it had nothing to do with the company’s “financial condition or financial reporting.” The full details were kept in a very small circle at the top echelon of the company, people familiar with the matter said. On Tuesday afternoon, some of the bank’s senior executives seemed unaware that Mr. Atkins was preparing to leave, according to people familiar with the matter. Industry regulators and some of the bank’s top advisers also were taken by surprise, these people said.

‘Audit must change’ – Barnier [Accountancy Age]
Internal markets commissoner Michel Barnier […] left the audit profession in no doubt that reform was on the way when he spoke at a Brussels conference on the subject and said: “One can no longer say ‘Move on, there is nothing to see’ on audit issues.”
Speaking yesterday he added: “The status quo is not an option for the auditing world. It’s not about changing for the sake of change, but to reply to very real needs which we can no longer ignore.”

Auditors face rule changes in Europe [FT]
Auditors operating in Europe face proposed rule changes this year aimed at ensuring their independence and making the market ore competitive, the European Union’s top financial services policymaker said on Thursday. Michel Barnier, EU internal market commissioner, told a conference in Brussels that in the wake of the financial crisis it was no longer possible to accept the status quo. “In this area of audit things will not stay stagnant,” he said. “We are going to take decisions….I shall make suggestions with the aim of presenting a proposed directive…in November,” he said.

Wells Fargo’s Former CFO Atkins to Receive $22 Million After Stepping Down [Bloomberg]
Atkins will be paid about $9.25 million in deferred compensation and pension benefits, according to a company proxy filing and an analysis conducted by Equilar Inc., a Redwood City, California-based executive-pay researcher. He may get another $13.2 million in restricted stock and options that will vest over the next few years, Oscar Suris, a Wells Fargo spokesman, said yesterday in a telephone interview.

Twitter as Tech Bubble Barometer [WSJ]
As Internet valuations climb and bankers and would-be buyers circle Silicon Valley in an increasingly frothy tech market, many eyes are on one particularly desirable, if still enigmatic, target: Twitter. Discussions with at least some potential suitors have produced an estimated valuation of $8 billion to $10 billion. Executives at both Facebook Inc. and Google Inc., among other companies, have held low-level talks with those at Twitter Inc. in recent months to explore the prospect of an acquisition of the messaging service, according to people familiar with the matter. The talks have so far gone nowhere, these people say.

Crystal Cathedral CFO resigns after criticism [AP]
The chief financial officer of Orange County’s Crystal Cathedral has retired after 33 years, saying he wants to help the church reduce expenses. The Orange County Register reports Tuesday that the church confirmed that 75-year-old Fred Southard stepped down following the Garden Grove megachurch’s bankruptcy filing last October. The trustee overseeing the bankruptcy case has scrutinized Southard, his six-figure housing allowance, and other employees and family members of founder Robert Schuller.

Congressman Chris Lee Resigns Following Gawker Revelation [Gawker]
It took a little over three hours from exposure to resignation. Has to be a record.

House Appropriations announces partial list of spending cuts [On the Money/The Hill]
Here are cut proposals that Congressman Lee won’t be voting on, “The cuts announced Wednesday are all from President Obama’s fiscal 2011 request that wasn’t enacted and include $268 million from the Treasury Department, $593 million from the IRS, $899 million from energy efficient and renewable energy, and $700 million from the Women, Infants and Children (WIC) program, which provides nutritional support to low-income women and their young children.”

Ernst & Young appoints first non-executives [FT]
Three prominent figures from the worlds of business and regulation have become the first independent non-executives to be appointed by Ernst & Young, the accountant that is fighting to distance itself from the collapse of Lehman Brothers. The trio are Mark Olson, a former chairman of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board, which regulates US auditors; Sir Richard Lambert, former director-general of the Confederation of British Industry, the UK employers’ body; and Klaus Mangold, a former DaimlerChrysler executive.

There Is a Credible Alternative [CEO Insights/Jeremy Newman]
NEWMAN! “I was delighted to issue a statement jointly with my counterparts from Grant Thornton, Mazars and RSM. This is the first time the four firms have issued a joint statement and shows how important this matter is to all of us in the profession and how important it is that there is a strong, and united, voice to balance the extensive lobbying of the four dominant audit firms and to provide support for the EC and their agenda for change.”

Brussels urged to end Big Four dominance [FT]
Four international accountancy networks have taken the unusual step of jointly calling for changes to the audit market in Europe and arguing that regulatory intervention is needed to dilute the power of the profession’s biggest operators. BDO International, RSM International and Grant Thornton International, the world’s fifth, sixth and seventh-biggest networks by fees, according to International Accounting Bulletin, have allied with smaller rival Mazars to lobby the European Commission. They want Michel Barnier, EU internal market commissioner, to take steps to reduce the dominance of Deloitte, Erd PwC in the auditing of large, listed companies.

U.N. Deal With PwC Is Faulted In Audit [WSJ]
United Nations officials made “serious breaches” of U.N. rules in awarding PricewaterhouseCoopers with a multimillion-dollar consultant contract on a project to overhaul the U.N.’s computer system, according to a U.N. audit reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. The audit report from the U.N.’s Office of Internal Oversight Services contends there were numerous ways in which the U.N. procurement department and the U.N.’s project director skirted U.N. regulations to favor PwC over other bidders. The report argues that PwC’s approximately $16 million contract bid was nearly $11 million higher than the lowest bid and exceeded the $11 million the U.N. had allocated for the project. The project, known as Umoja, involves a redesign of the U.N. procurement, human resources and financial management computer systems.

Accounting chief calls for more credible bank test [Reuters]
Last year’s European Union bank stress tests were not credible as they failed to reflect falls in sovereign debt prices, the incoming head of the world’s biggest accounting standard setter said on Wednesday. “One reason for scepticism was that sovereign bonds on the banking book were deemed to retain their full value, despite the fact that many were trading at steep discounts in the market,” Hans Hoogervorst, who takes over on July 1 as chair of the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB), told a European Commission hearing in Brussels.

FDIC Makes A Case Against Auditors For Bank Failures [Forbes]
Francine McKenna explores the possibility that the FDIC will turn its unique powers of suing the service providers of the failed banks that it takes into receivership.

Business opportunities make forensics, fraud examination credential worth investigating [AW]
The increasing demand for forensic accounting services from businesses of all sizes, including nonprofit organizations, has made qualifying for a second certification in forensics and fraud examination an attractive option for accountants. Organizations around the world lose an estimated 5 percent of their annual revenues to fraud, according to research performed by the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners (ACFE). Small businesses are especially vulnerable to fraud because of the lack of internal controls. The ACFE estimated the median loss suffered by organizations with fewer than 100 employees to be $200,000 in 2008.

3 reasons why your customers are unfriending you on Facebook [BZUK]
Aside from your trite weather updates.

London and Toronto Exchanges Announce Merger [DealBook]
The London Stock Exchange and the TMX Group, the parent company of the Toronto Stock Exchange, announced an all-share merger on Wednesday morning. If approved by shareholders, the combined exchange would form what would probably be the largest market for mining and other natural resource stocks. While TMX chairman Wayne Fox called the transaction “a merger of equals,” current London exchange shareholders will own 55 percent of the merged company, which has yet to be named. Xavier Rolet, the chief executive of London, will retain that position in the new company.

Divorce Versus Annulment: the Big Tax Difference [HuffPo]
FYI for those of you that made a big mistake recently,”To a couple interested only in the fastest way to untie the knot, the question may seem to be an unimportant technicality. Those watchful souls at the Internal Revenue Service, however, think that there’s an important difference when Form 1040 time rolls around. According to an IRS ruling, if an annulment is retroactive, the couple was never married. Result: they had no right to file joint returns.”

AIG to Post $4.1 Billion in Costs for Chartis’s Loss Reserves [Bloomberg]
American International Group Inc. said higher-than-forecast claims costs cut fourth-quarter profit by $4.1 billion, and $2 billion previously designated to repay its bailout will be used to bolster the property-casualty unit. The insurer reached an agreement with the U.S. Treasury Department permitting the company to keep $2 billion of proceeds from the sale of Star Life Insurance Co. and Edison Life Insurance Co., New York-based AIG said today in a statement. Funds will be used by Chartis for losses tied to coverage including workers’ compensation and asbestos liability.

Obama Vows to ‘Knock Down’ Business Barriers [WSJ]
President Barack Obama told business leaders at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce they should stop hoarding cash and start hiring in return for tax breaks and other government support for exports and innovation. Mr. Obama’s speech Monday on the home turf of the nation’s biggest business lobby was part of an effort by the White House to patch up relations with the Chambers after two years of clashes over health care, regulatory policy and tax issues. Mr. Obama offered conciliatory words, but the thrust of his speech was a call to business leaders to use the $2 trillion ince sheets to “get in the game” and start adding jobs in the U.S., despite slow growth in consumer demand.

Groupon CFO Jason Child: ‘I Don’t See Any Limits’ [Daily Finance]
To the business, that is. An IPO, on the other hand, “If we’re a public company, I have to spend time thinking about Sarbanes-Oxley, fair disclosure requirements. I have to think about balancing the need to report sufficient information to investors without giving too much to competitors.”

Michael Moore sues Weinsteins over Fahrenheit 9/11 [Reuters]
Filmmaker Michael Moore has sued Harvey and Bob Weinstein, accusing the brothers of “Hollywood accounting tricks” and “financial deception” that cheated him out of at least $2.7 million in profits from the hit documentary “Fahrenheit 9/11.” In a lawsuit filed Monday in Los Angeles Superior Court, Moore says the Weinsteins and an affiliated entity called the Fellowship Adventure Group agreed to split profits from the film 50-50 but then diverted monies to hide them from Moore.

Unlearning the Income Tax: Another Journey to Frivolity [Taxable Talk]
Russ Fox shares the latest in “taxes are illegal” education, from the Institute of Unlearning: “[I]ts proprietor, one Patrick Mooney, espouses that, ‘[A] private sector worker’s earnings are not legally subject to the federal tax on income. They never have been, and as long as we still have a Constitution, they never will be.’ Mr. Mooney was highly confident in his beliefs, so he filed a 2005 tax return with all zeroes, and claimed a refund of $2,647.48, the amount he had withheld in federal tax during the year.”

Private-Label Beers Take a Shot at Earning Joe Sixpack’s Respect [WSJ]
Your low-price alternative, “Supervalu, the third-largest U.S. grocery chain by revenue, began selling Buck Range Light, a low-priced domestic brew, in December. Drugstore chain Walgreens recently began offering Big Flats 1901 for as little as $2.99 a six pack. The retailers are trying to tempt shoppers with lower-priced alternatives to domestic mass-market brews such as MillerCoors LLC’s Keystone Light. The effort comes amid declining sales volumes for the beer industry, which has been hurt by stubbornly high unemployment.”

Fees will rise as Audit Commission is abolished [Accountancy Age]
David Heald, professor of accountancy at the University of Aberdeen Business School, said that auditors would have to charge local authorities higher fees to pay for insurance, which is currently covered by the commission itself. Speaking at the first hearing of the Commons communities and local government select committee inquiry on the future of council auditing, he said: “One of the reasons I am skeptical of audit fees going down is that private audit firms will have to buy insurance in the market, meaning that some councils will find it very hard to get audited.”

AOL to Acquire Huffington Post [WSJ]
AOL Inc. disclosed early Monday morning plans to acquire online news website Huffington Post for $315 million, as part of the Internet company’s attempt to turn its business around with a strategy of becoming a top producer of news, entertainment ntent. Huffington Post, a news and analysis website founded in 2005, reached 25 million unique visitors in December, according to comScore. AOL says that a combination of the two sites will reach a total of 117 million unique U.S. visitors.

Airline Losses May Top $600 Million on U.S. Cancellations [Bloomberg]
Airlines may be headed for more than $600 million in weather-related losses as U.S. winter storms trigger the most flight cancellations since the government began tracking the data in 1987. Almost 20,000 flights were scrubbed last week alone as snow blanketed U.S. airports such as Chicago’s O’Hare, a hub for United Continental Holdings Inc. and American Airlines, according to researchers FlightStats and FlightAware.com. Since Nov. 1, the total is 89,884, the firms’ tallies show.

It’s Snowing. Do We Get the Day Off? [WSJ]
Caruso Caruso, a retail business in Birmingham, Mich., lacks a stormy-weather policy because it always stays open, regardless of how brutal a wrath Mother Nature dishes out, says co-owner Lennon Caruso. The shop’s 15 employees have no excuse for failing to show up for a shift, he explains, because they all live within a reasonable driving distance and roads throughout the area are generally well-plowed after snow piles up. “It’s 2011. You have a car, get to work,” Mr. Caruso says.

Packers backer Lil Wayne free from tax bill [Tax Watchdog]
Best to pay $1.13 million before enjoying that action off GB’s win.

Driving privileges could be denied Marylanders who owe state taxes [DMWT]
The governor would let the state refuse to issue or renew licenses and registrations to those who have unpaid, undisputed tax obligations. By making drivers pay up, the administration estimates it could collect an additional $40 million over the next two years.

Career Tips from Annoying Office Mates [FINS]
Apparently, you can learn something from that person who marks every email as “Urgent!”

ICAI asks Big Four audit firms not to buy out Indian cos [Economic Times]
Amid concerns of alleged ‘surrogate practices’ of ‘Big Four’ accounting firms,regulator ICAI has asked PriceWaterhouseCoopers, KPMG , Ernst & Young and Deloitte to desist from acquiring Indian audit outfits. “Worldwide, there is a talk that there should be decongestion of the accounting profession…So that’s what we have suggested them (Big Four)… instead of acquiring firms please provide work to small and medium practitioners and go in for quality control,” ICAI President Amarjit Chopra said.

New tax tab for Rev. Al [NYP]
The Rev. Al Sharpton, who has vowed to clean up his fiscal house, has a new tax lien to pay. Sharpton owes $359,973 to the IRS for 2009 personal income tax, according to documents on file with the city. Public records show he owes a total of $3.7 million in city, state and federal taxes, including penalties, dating to 2002. But Sharpton’s spokeswoman, Rachel Noerdlinger, said that he had paid back “well over seven figures” as part of agreements with the state and IRS and that the liens remained on the books as “a matter of bureaucracy.”

American Apparel names new CFO [Reuters]
American Apparel Inc (APP.A) said John Luttrell will take over as chief financial officer from Adrian Kowalewski, who will become executive vice president of corporate strategy. […] Luttrell, an industry veteran, joins from CFOs 2 Go Partners, a management consulting firm, where he was a partner. He has been CFO of Gap Inc’s (GPS.N) Old Navy chain, Wet Seal Inc (WTSLA.O) and Cost Plus Inc.

IRS Misfired on Plug-in Tax Credit Claims, U.S. Government Audit Discovers [Bloomberg]
About 20 percent of U.S. tax credits for plug-in electric vehicles and alternative-fuel vehicles were filed in error, according to a government audit. The credits are important to companies such as General Motors Co. and Nissan Motor Co., which have entered the plug-in market with the $41,000 Chevrolet Volt and the $32,780 Nissan Leaf, respectively. Buyers of those vehicles can claim up to $7,500 from the federal government, and the companies are relying on the credits to be competitive on price with gasoline- based models. Most of the erroneous credits, according to the audit, went to taxpayers who sought benefits for vehicles such as Hyundai Motor Co.’s Sonata and GM’s Buick Enclave that didn’t qualify for tax breaks. Prisoners and IRS employees were among those who erroneously claimed credits.

Auditors must treat shareholders as their client [Accountancy Age]
“The profession doesn’t feel it works for shareholders… because of this, the whole process isn’t working for the shareholders. It’s in your hands to change this,” Lee told the audience of audit stakeholders. “Competition is on price, not quality. We need to change the mindset that the audit is an annuity – a guaranteed cashflow. That’s a real concern.”

PwC moving to 1075 Peachtree [Atlanta Business Chronicle]
About 1,100 PricewaterhouseCoopers employees will move into five floors of the 725,000-square 1075 Peachtree building in mid-2012, the firim said Thursday. The building is part of 12th & Midtown, the mixed-use development that is a cornerstone of Atlanta’s Midtown Mile.

“We Can’t Get Carried Away by Our Success.” [CFO]
As advertising revenue grew across all its media platforms, ESPN bucked Corporate America’s current cash-hoarding ways and instead invested in projects such as last June’s launch of ESPN 3D. The network expects to offer about 100 live events in 3D in its first year. In September, ESPN also entered into a long-term, wide-ranging agreement with Time Warner to supply many new cable customers with access to ESPN stations, online content, and video on demand. The month before, as part of its push for growth via overseas markets, ESPN acquired broad rights to UK Premier League Soccer for the next three seasons.

What Did Chase Know, and When Did It Know It? [Floyd Norris/NYT]
About Madoff, that is.

Tax-Preparer Oversight Still Years Off, Says Auditor [WSJ]
A U.S. tax-policy auditor Wednesday said it will likely be three years before the Internal Revenue Service’s new federal oversight of paid tax-return preparers is in full force, finding that the IRS has inadequate resources and processes in place. “As a growing number of Americans now use paid preparers to file their returns, the IRS must move forward expeditiously with its preparer oversight program,” said J. Russell George, the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration, in a statement Wednesday. “Our review found that more needs to be done.”

Senate votes to rescind IRS repog> [Reuters]
Bowing to pressure from small business groups who say the new reporting requirements will tie up entrepreneurs in paperwork, the Senate voted 81-17, for the amendment, which was appended to an unrelated aviation bill. Small firms and the self-employed are up in arms about the provision that, starting next year, they will have to submit 1099 tax forms on purchases of goods and services that total more than $600. “At a time when we need small businesses to help our economy grow, saddling them with expensive new requirements and paperwork burdens will only further hamper their ability to aid in our economic recovery,” Susan Eckerly of the National Federation of Independent Business said in a letter asking senators to support the amendment.