We don’t know a damn thing about gemstones but we’ll go out on a limb to say that 10,700 carats is a lot. That’s the size of a “ruby” that E&Y has the esteemed pleasure of trying to sell, as the administrators of now bankrupt Wrekin Construction in the UK.
The stone was once valued around £11 million but turns out its worth closer to £100.
E&Y is now resorting to hocking this overpriced paperweight, that will certainly be re-gifted many times over, in Rock ‘n’ Gem Magazine in the UK and Colored Stone Magazine here in the Land of the Free.
Rare £11m gem becomes £100 rock [BBC]
Failed group’s £11m ruby ‘near worthless’ [The Daily Telegraph]
Category: Uncategorized
Creepy Accountant of the Week
No matter how good this guy was at preparing tax returns, we recommend finding someone else, if you’re in the Mesa, AZ area:
Jess Alan Skousen was arrested at his Mesa accounting business Wednesday for allegedly having illegal child pornography on his laptop computer
Mesa Police Department spokesman Ed Wessing sai [sic] Skousen, 40, was arrested after his wife found sexual images of children on his computer.
Ouch. The wife turned him in. Can’t say that we blame her.
Wessing identified Skousen’s business as Self Tax Preparation on Stapley Road. The pictures found on the computer include those of children between ages of 2 and 15, some in sexual poses, according to Wessing. The Arizona Corporation Commission lists a number accounting, tax and other businesses under Skousen’s name.
Eight year-olds, Dude.
Mesa tax preparer arrested on child porn charges [Phoenix Business Journal]
Accounting Today’s List of Top 100 People Is Kinda Predictable
It’s nice that the folks over at AT put a list together so we’ve got something to talk about but it’s a fairly predictable list. The inclusions that we did like were Paul Caron over at TaxProf Blog and Bernie Madoff but otherwise it’s not too exciting.
There are a fair amount of politicians (including BO and T. Geith) and bureaucrats on the list which just indicates the slow, antagonizing descent financial accounting rules are making into direct government oversight. Barney Frank on the list is no surprise, we’re just thankful that Maxine Waters didn’t sneak on there because we would have stormed the AT offices with torches.
Pols aren’t nearly as surprising from a tax policy perspective but still, seeing Charlie Rangel on the list is dubious since he can’t even track how many rent-controlled apartments he has.
More, after the jump
The Big 4 are represented by:
• KPMG – Tim Flynn and John Veihmeyer
• PwC – Dennis Nally and Robert Moritz
• E&Y – Jim “I heart global accounting standards” Turley.
• Deloitte – Jim Quigley and Dr. Phil Salzberg
Eddie Nusbaum also made the list for GT but sadly, he doesn’t have a rose in his teeth. The token “large but not TOO large” picks are the McGladrey & Pullen Managing Partner and Clifton Gunderson CEO.
If you’ve got some time to waste today, go download the digital edition and approve of or call bullshit on whoever you see fit.
Problem of the Day: Tattle Tale Emails
No doubt your firm asks you do things that inevitably find their way to the back burner, that you forget about, or just plain don’t want to do. Mandatory ethics training, “crucial” CPE courses, office-wide pep rallies, etc.
By the time you’ve received the tenth email reminding you of the “mandatory ethics training that will ensure that you remain in compliance with firm policy and demonstrate [insert your firm’s name here] commitment to ethics” your urge to say “TO HELL WITH IT” has easily overtaken any intent you had on completing the training in the first place.
More, after the jump
Your aloof attitude, as you’re all acutely aware, is NOT APPRECIATED. Because of your lack of commitment, most firms find it totally necessary to email anyone that you’re remotely connected to, including the partner in charge of your firm/office informing them of your slacker attitude.
You know the type. Your name, next to something to the effect of “not in compliance/attendance” being sent around to inform everyone that your commitment to your firm is clearly in question. Someone obviously surmised that this was the best motivation for you to get your shit together if you want to remain a part of this awesome place to work.
Often times, you’re not even made aware of your non-compliance and one of your goody two-shoes friends sends you an email, “You know you’re in trouble for not going to the town hall meeting, don’t you?”
Just before you consider doing what EVERYONE is expecting you to do (read: freak the f*ck out), you calm everyone down by saying, “Yeah, my bad.” And hopefully it hasn’t gotten to the point where you’re meeting with a very gruff and passive-aggressive partner that drones on about the importance of the CPE/meeting/training in question, because that’s just awkward.
Discuss the stonewalling, and then your firm’s preferred method of tattling on the riff-raff in the comments.
BDO May Be Taking a Crack at This ‘Global 6’ Thing
BDO is done messing around. Having watched Grant Thornton fail miserably at trying to get the bean counter universe to embrace “Global 6 Accounting Organization”, the firm, with the help of global CEO Jeremy Newman’s blog, are stepping it up a notch.
According to Newman’s post for today and Accountancy Age, all BDO firms are now operating under the name ‘BDO’ rather than, for example, ‘BDO Seidman’ for the U.S. firm and ‘BDO Stoy Howard’ in the UK.
The reason for the name change, according to the one managing partner:
Continued, after the jump
Simon Michaels, managing partner at BDO, said the move was not just about the “look and feel” of the brand but was aimed at “significantly increasing our market share”. If we present ourselves as a unified global network… then the clients experience the high level of service and that helps to drive the reputation,” he said.
See? It’s working already. A ‘managing partner at BDO’ means this guy could be anywhere. It’s a global firm, in case you’ve forgotten. And ‘increasing our market share’? Dude may not be saying ‘Global 6 Accounting Organization’ but that’s all we’re hearing.
Newman chimes in on his blog:
At the same time we will be updating the ‘look’ of our visual identity – which will hopefully be evident from this website. Nothing too dramatic – but building on the BDO heritage whilst signalling a more modern approach.
Call us unappreciative of the subtle changes for this new ‘look’ but it seems the same to us. Our speculation is that the new ‘BDO’ is striving for continuity amongst all its offices in order to saturate the market to the point that ‘Global 6 Accounting Organization’ bulldozes its way into the vernacular.
Discuss BDO’s strategy or perhaps your thoughts on ‘Global 6’ in general, in the comments.
BDO rebrand creates unified global identity [Accountancy Age]
Gun to Head, Dell Implements an ‘Accounting Code of Conduct’
Whatever the hell that is. What we’re sure of is that Dell would have never implemented such a code had they not been investigated by the SEC, starting in 2006.
Along with the code to help force the accounting policies grab-ass hands to themselves, Dell also now has a “global team of accountants to focus on revenue recognition issues”.
Again, not too familiar with this, but at most companies, this is typically known as the “accounting department.”
Preliminary Analytics | 09.30.09
• November Deadline Set for Kraft’s Cadbury Offer – Wonderful. We’re going to hear about cheese substance made by robots trying to copulate with sweet confections for another month. [DealBook]
• CIT Said to Weigh Financing From Citigroup, Barclays – What? They didn’t call this one? [Bloomberg]
• Bank-Bailout Fund Faces Years in Red as Failures Jolt System – “FDIC officials stressed that the fund’s depleted state wouldn’t affect depositors because federally insured deposits are backed by the full faith and credit of the U.S. government.” Oh, well that’s a relief then. [WSJ]
• Plenty More Bank Losses Expected Globally – When will this happen? [WSJ]
• UBS Warns on Third-Quarter Losses – Wow. That was fast. [WSJ]
• Confidence surges among CFOs in US – It feels like the confidence has been surging for some time now. [FT]
• Auditing the Fed: Redux – Our contributor, Adrienne Gonzalez got linked over at FT Alphaville. Nice work! [JDA]
The Year Ahead Poll Results
The voting ended last night and we know your anticipation is reaching fever pitch so we’ve finally presented the results, after the jump.
1. White Collar Slavery: 47.3%
2. Happiness Rating: Zero: 26%
3. Swap Green Visors:13.7%
4. Big Four Union: 13%
Troubling news as you can see. Nearly 75% of you are expecting to be underpaid and miserable. We recommend that you start some sort of cash only business and get your asses into therapy.
The bottom 27% of you seem to be proactive at least but 13% of you may be viewed by some as socialists. However, that seems to be the hot thing these days so we say go for it.
SHOCKER: Audit of the Defense Department Had Serious Problems
We’re pretty surprised that the Defense Department has an audit of its contracts at all but since they do, we’ll give them credit for at least setting up some faux-oversight. That’s where the credit stops however, since the auditors work for “The Pentagon’s Defense Contract Audit Agency” (“DCAA”) which just reeks of independence.
As we mentioned, the fact that anyone would attempt to audit the Defense Department is laughable at best. Some problems that the General Accounting Office found, according to Web CPA:
The problems uncovered by the investigation included waste of time and resources by the audit agency. As an example, the GAO noted that DCAA auditors spent 530 hours to support an audit of the cash management system at a research and development grantee, only to discover that the billing system was non-existent.
Awesome. Three months of work to discover a phantom billing system. Oh, but there’s more:
During a separate billing system audit of a supplier of combat systems, “Auditors deleted key audit steps related to the contractor policies and internal controls over progress payments without explanation.” One DCAA auditor told the GAO he did not perform detailed tests because, “The contractor would not appreciate it.”
Testing is rather inconvenient when accountability is involved. Especially in the name of national security.
For one of the 69 reviews the GAO performed, the audit report cited eight significant deficiencies in the contractor’s accounting system but since the contractor wasn’t really cool with that, the auditors dropped five of the SD’s and recommended that the other three be “improved without additional work”.
Buckling to clients isn’t as unusual so we’ll let this one slide and considering the DoD’s track record, they’ll continue doing whatever they hell they want. We just thought we’d bring it up here for the record.
GAO: DOD Audit Oversight Has “Widespread Problems” [Web CPA]
The Year Ahead Poll
Well done people. Your creativity is unmatched. Here’s the poll to appease your craving for democracy. Since we know this will be a tough choice, the poll closes at 11:59 pm on Monday, giving you the weekend to ponder your decision.
Vote, after the jump
TGIF
A few more updates for this weeks layoffs. We’ll continue to update you as long as more information comes in. Good luck to everyone affected.
Your AICPA Dues at Work
We know you’re all worried about the financial regulation overhaul because it may just make your lives more of a living hell. PCAOB, IRS, state accountancy boards, etc. are bad enough but no, we could all be looking at more alphabet soup (in this case the Consumer Financial Protection Agency) in the name of political grandstanding.
Fear not. The bastions of accountant lobbying, the AICPA, is all over this like Barry Salzberg at a Rogaine convention.
Continued, after the jump
[AICPA Chairman, Bob] Harris argued that the proposed legislation creating the agency, the Consumer Financial Protection Act, was overly broad.
“The definition of ‘financial activity’ in the bill is so broad as to include many services that CPAs routinely provide to their clients in accordance with a very strict regulatory and oversight regime,” he said. “The bill would result in redundant regulation of CPAs and CPA firms that are already subject to appropriate and significant oversight by the IRS, Treasury, state boards of accountancy, and professional and ethical standards for the AICPA’s members.”
Sweet Jesus, Bob. We actually agree with you on this. The situation sounds oddly similar to the situation the brain trust in DC is trying to fix now. Too many regulators let the sketchy stuff fall between the cracks and now we’re in economic no man’s land. Add more
Who knew that there was common sense being shoveled around in the halls of Congress? The problem is, we’re certain the amount of bullshit being shoveled outweighs the common sense by an exponential margin.
AICPA Wants CPAs Exempted from Consumer Agency [Web CPA]