When accounting goes unaccounted for
Unlike some people, I'll bet Dean Smith sent his tax stuff to his CPA in a timely and orderly fashion.
Coach Smith willed his trust to send a $200 check to each his former players following his passing. #DeanSmith pic.twitter.com/NyiBhU9taQ
— Jiimmm Demmpseeeyyy (@ChestPassDemps) March 26, 2015
[via Deadspin]
We’ve chronicled many cases of poaching in these pages, focusing mainly on PwC’s harvest of KPMG partners. You may have thought that this type of competition occurred between the top firms with the occasional outlier of an obscure firm catching a Big 4 fish. Not so! Accounting Today reports that a super-regional [?] firm also doesn’t mind mixing it up with its smaller rivals:
Lisa J. Cines, CPA, has joined super-regional firm Dixon Hughes Goodman LLP as managing partner of the firm’s Rockville office. Previously, Cines had spent almost 30 years with Top 100 Firm Aronson, including serving as managing officer from 2001 to 2010. Most recently she was partner-in-charge of business and corporate development.
Thirty years at a firm including nine years as a managing officer isn’t anything to sneeze at, so this jump from Rockville, MD-based Aronson – a firm with approximately $56 million in revenues – to DHG who has roughly $280 in revenues (both numbers based on the most recent stats) this late in one’s career makes us wonder. Perhaps you can read between the lines for us:
“Dixon Hughes Goodman represents the future of accounting – a firm with a commitment to market niches and depth within its areas of service,” she said. “I look forward to this new phase of my career with such a dynamic organization.”
Maybe pinstripes are a little too prevalent at Aronson? That’s the theory we’re going with at the moment. If you’ve got other ideas, let us know.
Have you, like many foreigners, been tripping about getting into the US to take the CPA exam, battling with strict post 9/11 Visa rules and other assorted red tape? Trip no more, the CPA exam is about to go international. This is huge because the exam is also about to get an international makeover (like IFRS testing in FAR and international audit standards in AUD) but that couldn’t at all be coincidentally related to this announcement from the AICPA:
The Uniform CPA Examination will be offered outside the 55 U.S. jurisdictions for the first time in its history in 2011. The American Institute of Certified Public Accountants, National Association of State Boards of Accountancy and Prometric – the three organizations that jointly offer the CPA Examination in the United States – reached an agreement to administer the exam in international locations.
The CPA Examination next year will be offered in Japan, Bahrain, Kuwait, Lebanon and the United Arab Emirates.
The international exam will be the same as the one offered in the U.S., using the same computerized format and administered in English. As in the U.S., the purpose of taking the examination will be to qualify for licensure as a CPA through U.S. state boards of accountancy.
Security has been one issue for the AICPA in deciding where to offer the CPA exam even though it will continue to administer the exam through Prometric. International testing will be subject to the same state board or jurisdiction rules that determine eligibility for CPA exam candidates since there is no Dubai Board of Accountancy. Just as now, potential international candidates will have to meet the requirements of whichever jurisdiction they choose to apply. Which I guess makes all the residency-requirement states out of the running to be a part of this epic new spin on the computerized CPA exam?
Some have mentioned on earlier bitch sessions about the AICPA that their motivation is a monetary one. Expanding membership, for example, brings in revenue. Increasing the passing CPA exam score (thereby causing more failures and, one would imagine, more subsequent $$$ retakes after) is another example though that’s just a rumor last I heard. So if one were inclined to postulate as to the motive behind this move and approach it skeptically, you might come to the conclusion that this could equal a pretty significant payday for the AICPA as well as NASBA, Prometric, ChoicePoint and all the CPA review courses who make a living off of this exam. I’m not against it.
I guess we will find out what significance the U.S. CPA exam still holds for the rest of the world. Even if we end up looking pretty bad when international candidates do way better on the AICPA’s new international exam content in 2011.
GGN took to Twitter earlier this evening to air his grievances about being shown how […]