If W. Anderson Bishop wanted to sound like a person who is refusing to adopt a different system of measurement because A) it was developed outside the United States B) doing things the easy way is dumb or C) he’s a crusty old fart, he has succeed admirably.
“We didn’t join the metric system when everybody else did,” says W. Anderson Bishop, [Hallador Energy Co.’s] chief financial officer. U.S. accounting rules are “the gold standard, and why would we want to lower our standards just to make the rest of the world happy?”
That, or Robert Marcus needs a little training in positive spin:
The environment for cable television subscribers is “very, very weak,” according to Time Warner Cable Inc. (TWC) Chief Financial Officer Robert Marcus, and the company may actually see the total number of subscribers to its television, Internet and telephone services shrink during the current quarter.
The statement, made Wednesday at a Bank of America Merrill Lynch conference in California, caused Time Warner Cable stock to lose as much as 5.3% in Wednesday afternoon trading immediately after Marcus delivered his opening remarks.
Marcus said August saw the “usual uptick in subscriber performance,” as children went back to college, but unemployment, high vacancy rates in housing and “really anemic new home formation” are “resulting in some pretty weak subscriber numbers.”
CFOs have a tough job. Oh sure maybe a select few get to globe-trot with the Fab Four to the likes of Davos but the lion-share of them have to deal with less sexy tasks like, say, saving money.
Or solve a state fiscal crisis! Enter Florida’s CFO, Alex Sink. Ms. Sink is taking cost saving initiatives to levels that the Big 4 either considered and found ridiculous (even for them) or will be implementing them in the near future.
Last year Ms. Sink had her staff count paper clips in order to reduce costs. No, seriously. “Her staff spent untold hours determining the Department of Financial Services has 537 pounds of paper clips, 37,601 binder clips and 17,425 pens.”
The staff that were found to hogging more than a reasonable amount of suppliers were fired on the spot. Okay, not really but yeah, staff were counting counting paper clips. Makes you glad to be working at public accounting, no?
The latest idea from the CFO of the FLA that is the creation of the “CFO Depot”. This will allow employees to swap supplies as needed, as opposed to rummaging through every drawer at the their desk. Presumably this will cut down on violence in the workplace and will save the state money. Ms. Sink is encouraging other state agencies to set up similar systems, as this may save the state $14 million.
As expected, James Davis, Stanford Financial’s Chief Number-Maker-Upper has entered his not guilty plea but his counsel has stated that his client will plead guilty to all the charges against him as early as next week. The initial plea has been made in order to finalize the plea agreement with Davis prior to his pleading guilty
This is all occurring while Stan the Man’s attorneys are in New Orleans appealing a Houston judge’s ruling that he has to pump iron in prison throughout his trial. Stan’s attorneys continue to maintain that their client is NOT a flight risk, which is kinda like saying that Bernie Madoff is NOT in jail. Ex-Stanford CFO to plead guilty within 2 weeks: lawyer [Reuters]
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CFOs have a tough job. Oh sure maybe a select few get to globe-trot with the