An Ontario judged dismissed a case against three former Nortel Networks Corp. executives who were charged with accounting fraud at what was once North America’s largest telephone-equipment maker before its collapse in 2009. Judge Frank Marrocco said the burden of proof was not met in fraud charges against former Chief Executive Officer Frank Dunn, former Chief Financial Officer Douglas Beatty and former Controller Michael Gollogly. Marrocco made the ruling today in Toronto. “I am not satisfied beyond a reasonable doubt” that the three executives “deliberately misrepresented the financial results of Nortel Networks,” Marrocco wrote in his 141-page ruling.Greg Lafontaine, Beatty’s lawyer, said the decision was “fantastic.” The verdict “was bang on with what the evidence dictated,” he told reporters outside the court house. Beatty, standing next to his lawyer, smiled but said nothing. Beatty will now be “moving on,” Lafontaine said. [Bloomberg]
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Cost Cutting Measure of the Day: Ditching Arial Typeface
This story is republished from CFOZone, where you’ll find news, analysis and professional networking tools for finance executives.
Looking for an easy way for your company to save a few bucks on office supplies? Change the font in the documents you print, reports the Associated Press.
The idea is simple enough: Certain fonts use different amounts of ink. That Arial font Word formerly defaulted to actually cost you money compared to using something like Century Gothic. For example, the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay has asked its faculty and staff to switch to Century Gothic for all printed documents. By doing so, the school figures it could save between 5 and 10 percent on its annual $100,000 ink and toner bill.
But such a switch could create more problems, because documents printed in Century Gothic tend to run longer than others. So while you may save on ink, you’re now getting smacked by bigger paper costs.
But it’s certainly interesting to think about how typography affects our business world. I highly recommend the documentary “Helvetica“, which explores arguably the most used typeface in Corporate America (think New York subway signs, American Airlines, AT&T and Jeep, among many others) and why we find it so appealing.
The AP story offers up a great example of how powerful type can be. In order to discourage people from printing too many documents, Microsoft even switched its default font from Times New Roman to Cambria for serif type and from Arial to Calibri for sans-serif.
The thinking? “The more pleasing a font looks on the screen, the less tempted someone will be to print,” the AP reported.
CFOs Are More Optimistic About Business Now That the Democrats Don’t Control the House
Yet the majority of these CFOs don’t believe that the federal government’s financial policy has had any effect on their business.
So does that mean CFOs are indifferent about which party is in actually in power but more generally speaking, Republicans give them the warm fuzzies while Dems give them the heebie jeebies?
Despite the fact that more than 70 percent of chief financial officers (CFOs) at Deloitte’s annual CFO Vision conference earlier this month believe current government financial policy has either had no effect or negatively impacted their business, the tide is turning toward a more positive outlook. A majority (59 percent) of the same group of CFOs expect the recent Congressional midterm elections to have a positive impact on their industry.
Maybe we’re a little slow (especially this week) but Sandy Cockrell (he introduced us to the “bathtub recovery“) attempts to clarify:
“CFOs are confident that they can pull the levers within their own companies to do their jobs, but they are most worried about external issues involving economic recovery and regulations,” said Sanford Cockrell III, national managing partner of Deloitte’s U.S. CFO Program. “The biggest risk they see is a prolonged, stagnant recovery. Industries are also concerned about too much government intervention. If the employment picture does not also improve and if general pessimism continues to rise, we would expect pessimism to start having a larger impact on companies’ earnings and investment expectations.”
Okay so 70% of the CFOs polled “believe current government financial policy has either had no effect or negatively impacted their business,” yet they still fear government intervention? And if what Cockrell is saying rings true with the majority of CFOs polled, the second John Boehner holds the gavel as the new Speaker of the House, the employment picture may slowly begin turn around? Do we have that right? Really, finance chiefs of America? That’s what you’re pinning your hopes on?
Are they all confused or did Deloitte just throw together a poorly designed poll? We’re stumped but if you’ve got the time and energy, we’ll entertain some theories.
We’re Not Convinced That CFOs Mean What They Say When They Switch Audit Firms for No Apparent Reason
Today in boilerplate press releases, MedAssets dropped BDO as its auditor for the bigger and bluer KPMG and the CFO punted on giving a real reason as to why.
“We are very fortunate to have had the pleasure of working with BDO Seidman for many years, including during the period of time covering our initial public offering in 2007,” said Neil Hunn, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, MedAssets. “BDO has been a tremendous business partner for us and instrumental in our success. MedAssets has experienced tremendous growth, especially over the last few years, and we expect this trend to continue. As such, we feel that KPMG is best suited to serve our Company and stockholders in the future. We look forward to our new relationship with KPMG.”
So if we were translate this statement, basically it sounds like MedAssets wants a big firm because the business is growing like gangbusters and they simply can’t be held back by a second-tier firm like BDO.
Or maybe we’ve got it dead wrong. Maybe MedAssets is spooked about BDO’s chances in the Banco Espirito appeal. Maybe KPMG’s Atlanta office is desperate for work and lowballed the audit fee. Feel free to share your own speculation but we’re sure as hell not buying the statement that a firm (in this case, BDO) ‘has been a tremendous business partner’ and ‘instrumental in our success’ and just gets up and dropped because ‘tremendous growth’ is expected to continue. Is BDO really that incapable of continuing to serve the company?
Basically, we are asking for more honest language in SEC filings and press releases.
MedAssets Engages KPMG as Auditor [Press Release]
8-K [SEC.gov]