Category: News

Disappointing Accounting Firm Trend: Managers Sitting in Cubicles

Sorry for the downtime today, we’ll make it up to you over the weekend. Promise.

It’s no secret that staff professionals working in public accounting are urged to “stay until manager” for all kinds of substantive reasons that we won’t get into here.

The attraction of being promoted to manager has many superficial benefits including being called a “manager”, having “manager” on your business cards, and getting an office rather than slumming in the cube farm.


With the reconfiguration of some offices however, your dream of getting an office with a door and possibly a window may be dashed as more and more managers, senior managers, and — GASP — even some directors are living life in the grey squares.

Now while this development is most certainly a direct slap in the face of everything public accounting represents, our understanding is that it is not spreading around like H1N1. It depends on the city you’re in, your practice, and possibly your coolness factor.

But if you are in one of the unlucky few in could be much, much worse if more firms follow the lead of E&Y Jericho and go the no-décor-will-be-allowed route (God help you if they lock the bathrooms too). How will these managers be able to appropriately express themselves? Oh! And how on Earth is a manager supposed to get some action during busy season? Cubicle sex is not happening. Christ, how will they live?

KPMG, Grant Thornton DC Offices Are Closing at Noon

We heard that it was getting ugly in the Nation’s Capital so we called around to find out what’s what:

• KPMG – “Closing at noon both DC and Tyson’s”

• E&Y – “No word yet”


• Deloitte – “We’re hopeful”

• PwC – “We go by the Federal Government”

• Grant Thornton – Closing at noon.

Nothing like a snow day but a snow day during busy season is an especially welcome event. It’s supposed to get nasty in Philly too but it hasn’t started snowing there yet, so unfortch you’ll probably have a full day ahead of you (out at 3 pm if you’re lucky).

An added bonus is the possibility that the storm could keep you from working the weekend. Unless, of course, you plan on working from home. If this is the case, we advise you to get home safely, set everything down when you get there, take off your coat and slap yourself. Twice. Hard.

Overstock.com to Restate Financial Statements; Reassures Profitability for 2009

Well, then. This all very awkward for Pat Byrne and Co.

In an 8-K filed late yesterday Overstock.com announced that it would be restating the consolidated financial statements contained in its 2008 annual report, and the those contained in the Company’s last three 10-Q’s: period ended March 31, 2009; June 30, 2009; and September 30, 2009 (unreviewed!).

It goes without saying that those financial statements can no longer be relied upon.


The restatement is a result of errors that Overstock fired Grant Thornton for last year that led to a bit of a cat fight between the firm — who is not mentioned in the filing — and humble servant Patrick Byrne.

The Big O also admitted that it “incorrectly amortized the expense related to restricted stock units based on the actual three year vesting schedule rather than a three year straight line amortization and applied an outdated forfeiture rate in calculating its expense under the plans.” While they were at it, they threw a bunch of other corrections that were “[not] material either individually or in the aggregate,” as the saying goes.

The Company is still mulling over the numbers with both PwC and KPMG so there’s a chance that they could change but as of now, $1.9 million of income is going back to 2008 from 2009 and an increase in expense of $350k in 2008 and $900k in 2009.

But wait! The filing reminds us that “Patrick Byrne, the Company’s Chief Executive Officer, had stated to The New York Observer, ‘that the company is about to report its first annual profit.’ The Company continues to believe that it will report positive net income for fiscal 2009.” Whew! See shareholders? More commitment from your servant.

Sam Antar has been following this story from the very beginning and he is not shy about being vindicated:

Today’s news is a complete vindication of my analysis of Overstock.com’s financial reports and shows that the company willfully engaged in a financial reporting manipulation scheme. The company is restating its financial reports to correct GAAP violations, exactly as I have recommended in this blog. To date, every single initial financial report issued by Overstock.com throughout the company’s entire existence has violated GAAP or some other SEC disclosure rule. The company now has the dubious distinction of having to restate its financial reports three times in the last three years to fix GAAP violations.

We shot Sam an email last night and he simply told us, “I am going out for a glass of fine wine.”

So while this appears to wrap up the SEC’s Division of Corporation Finance investigation, one little problem that still remains is that the SEC’s Enforcement Division has not wrapped up its probe of the company. Yeah; so there’s that. Considering the the track record of the SEC, we’d typically give a company a 50/50 shot of coming out of a probe by the Enforcement Division unscathed but in the case of Overstock, we’ll be going with Schape’s crew.

Stephen Chipman’s Latest Blog Post: Atlanta Knows How to Party; The End of Suffering

Last week, we were a little disappointed in Stephen Chipman’s debut blog entry; A) it’s not public for the whole world to read and B) it reminded us of a journal except all the good stuff like morning bathroom routine, the wife’s headache, compensating for said headache, etc. was left out.

This week is a little better (no Lost recap and 1,200+ words are big negative points), as he shared with the GT troops about his little excursion down to Atlanta to do some glad-handing at the open house for the new office space there. Chip was impressed not only by the new LEED facility but by the willingness of a fair amount of people in Atlanta that had nothing better to do on a Wednesday night:

What struck me was that these were not people who came through obligation; they clearly wanted to be there. I met many clients, and they all had warm and wonderful things to say about our Atlanta office partners and people. Where some business receptions can be deadly if the mix and tone aren’t just right, people were really enjoying themselves — they stayed, they mingled, they had fun, many enjoying themselves well past 9 o’clock at night. (It kicked off at 5).

Okay, so where are these deadly receptions occurring? We’ve been to some wild get-togethers where some people might not get along but there was no risk of anyone ending up dead. Perhaps he just means “shockingly awkward.” That’s way more believable than a party where a homicide may or may not occur.

And why would he be surprised if people could booze for free for over four hours? If there’s free beer and wine to be had in the middle of the week, that probably is the best thing you could do on a Wednesday.

The only other tidbit worth mentioning is that Steve-o got a little redemption that was over two decades in the making. Back in the 80s when Chip was a manager living in Dallas, chasing SMU tail and starting to network, he was courting a prospect that ultimately went with a “large competitor.” Since that point in time, he has not taken it well:

For years — and this was more than two decades ago — I’ve watched this company from afar, and it’s become quite successful. I felt a pang every time I saw their signs (which were everywhere), and also their advertising at NHL games and sports arenas. With every sign sighting, I got increasingly frustrated that they were not a Grant Thornton client.

Many times SC could be caught looking off into the distance, dreaming about the one that got away. A tear. A lone tear…

Well you can rejoice now bitches! Turns out a current GT client recently purchase this prospect that broke our hero’s heart and is now a client of GT. “After almost 22 years of misery, my suffering has ended,” SC utters. This was his White Whale.

And to wrap it up, SC threw in a nice little pep talk for all of you GTers out there feeling down and out, “We don’t need to be the biggest to be the best.” He’s still thinking about you; even if you’re not in Atlanta.

Still no Lost recap.

Dita von Teese’s Accountant Understands Why She Has to Spend $70k on a Dress

Last month we mentioned that while we enjoy her genius, we wouldn’t want to be of Lady Gaga’s accountant. She definitely falls into the “clients that make you want to jump out the window” bucket.

Likewise, if we had our choice of clients, we wouldn’t be chasing down burlesque artists that marry rock stars, in this case, Dita von Teese. Not because we don’t enjoy burlesque artists and the rock stars they love, quite the contrary actually; it’s just seems that the headaches associated with such a client would be more trouble than it would be worth.


Surprisingly, DVT takes money quite seriously and is not as slipshod as you might expect.

“I refuse to go to the hair salon and have a $300 hair dye job – I do it myself at home with an $8 dye kit… I’ve always been a saver…I saved at least 15[%] of everything I earned and invested it in mutual funds“

Jesus, talk about sensible. However there is this glimmer:

“I think nothing of spending $8,000 on a corset for my show. My accountant once said he couldn’t understand how I spent $70,000 on a single dress but then he came to my show and saw how lavish it was and told me afterwards that now he understood.“

Those are work related expenses though; count us unimpressed. We’re expecting Gaga-esque negligent wasting of money. Like seriously getting carried away.

“I bought [a Jaguar] one night on eBay for $35,000 when I’d had too much champagne.“

Yes. That’s the best she can offer. Plus, there’s this:

“I pay my [credit card] balances off every month.”

More sensible behavior. Doesn’t sound like she’d be that bad of a client at all. Hell, she probably even keeps all her receipts. L. Gaga’s accountant might consider asking her for some advice.

Dita von Teese: ‘I spent $70,000 on a single dress for my show’ [Telegraph]

Grant Thornton to Close Greensboro, NC Office

We’ve received multiple tips informing us that Grant Thornton’s Greensboro, North Carolina office will be closing in the spring after busy season has ended.

Greensboro has approximately 35 professionals in all three service lines although our sources indicate that many tax professionals were laid off late last year in anticipation of the closure. Greensboro currently functions as a satellite of the Charlotte office which houses the support professionals.

What’s not known at this time is whether the office will become virtual, similar to the setup that Ernst & Young arranged for its Greensboro office other whether it will be an outright closure.

We contacted Grant Thornton for comment and had not heard back from them at the time of this posting.

If you’re familiar with the situation in Greensboro and have more information, get in touch with us. We’ll continue to keep you updated as we learn more.

Facebook Finds a CFO, Hopefully One that is Okay with Awkward Interaction

Facebook Inc. announced today that David Ebersman will be the company’s Chief Financial Officer:

Ebersman, 39, will oversee Facebook’s finance, accounting, investor relations and real estate functions. He will formally start in September, Palo Alto, California-based Facebook said in a statement today.

You’ll note that Ebersman will oversee “investor relations”. It’s probably no coincidence that this is not a task that falls on Mark Zuckerberg who “has been known to have awkward interactions with other humans”:http://valleywag.gawker.com/344440/60-minutes-scoop-zuckerberg-remains-awkward-with-humans.
Thus, another challenge that will face Ebersman in his new position will be actually interacting with his boss. We here at Going Concern predict that awkward encounters with Zuckerberg will definitely be the biggest unforeseen challenge that Ebersman will wrestle with.
The article does not elaborate on whether Ebersman’s status updates on the social networking site are trite observations about the weather, his busy weekend, or a bad day at work.
“
Facebook Names Former Genentech Manager Ebersman Finance Chief”:http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=a1vS1Ub87oSA [Bloomberg]

Stanford CFO Flipping?

Chief Financial Officer Bean Counter Number-Maker-Upper Officer at Stanford Financial, James Davis, is appearing in court Wednesday to answer fraud and conspiracy charges.
Davis has spent the last few months cooperating with prosecutors and may flip on Stan the Man regarding the small matter of some money gone missing.
No agreement has been reached yet for Davis but considering the number of years being handed out and Stan’s potential fate of multiple centuries in prison, he may at the very least, consider cooperating.

Stanford CFO to appear in court [Accountancy Age]