Waiting for Madoff, Angry Crowd Is Disappointed – Apparently, everyone was hoping for a lynching in Union Square. 150 years is so unsatisfying. [New York Times]
Madoff Faces Harsher Imprisonment Than Corporate Predecessors [Bloomberg]
Deficit forces California to issue IOUs – Still as good as cash, right? [FT.com]
UBS Selling Park Ave. Stake [New York Post]
- Friday Footnotes: Amateur and Non-Independent Forensic Accounting Not Appreciated By Local Parks Department; KPMG Getting Dogged | 6.26.26
- Top 20 Firm Eide Bailly Gets on the Private Equity Train
- Monday Morning Accounting News Brief: PwC Gave Us a Reason to Mention GTA 6; The Bad KPMG Anecdotes Are Adding Up | 6.22.26
Review Comments – 6.29.09 – Bernie Madoff Sentenced to 150 Years in Prison Edition
In honor of the vengeance justice handed down today by Judge Denny Chin, we found some of the better posts out there re: Master do Ponz getting smacked by the book:
Questions linger over $65bn fraud [FT.com]
Guesstimate Bernie Madoff’s Sentence [DealBreaker]
Madoff’s Little Helpers [Clusterstock]
The Real Victims of Bernie Madoff [Daily Intel]
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]
Deloitte May Be the #1 Firm of No Fun
Regardless of who a client is or what their business is, accounting firms don’t like to lose them. Lost revenue, a little bit of a slap in the face, a promise that wasn’t delivered (which, let’s be honest, really isn’t all that rare).
For whatever reason, we find the story that Heelys, the skate shoe company, having fired Deloitte as their auditor, has to be an especially tough pill to swallow for the Big D.
Why, you may ask? How about the fact that Heelys MAKES SHOES THAT HAVE WHEELS ON THEM which might be something fun.
According to Reuters, Heelys gave Deloitte-period the heave-ho primarily because of cost considerations. That may be true but something tells us that the real reason might have been Deloitte putting the kibosh on Heelys request of the audit team to wear the skate shoes while working at the client’s HQ.
Deloitte, like all Big 4 firms, being the fun killer, likely argued that skate shoes did fall under acceptable attire in its dress code.
It was probably only a matter of time until the Heelys audit committee concluded that they had to find another audit firm with smaller sticks up their asses. Partners on the engagement are now quietly stewing with their decision that may have put their firm solidly in the #1 slot for hating all things fun.
Heelys dismisses accounting firm [Reuters]
Scoping | 06.29.09
State Street may face SEC charges over mortgages – “The Boston-based company said on Monday that Securities and Exchange Commission staff issued a ‘Wells’ notice to its banking unit on June 25 related to disclosures and management by State Street Global Advisors of “active” fixed-income strategies in 2007 and in prior periods.” [Reuters]
UBS Said to Seek U.S. Tax Deal in Weeks – “With a payment of 3 billion to 5 billion Swiss francs, UBS hopes in the next two weeks to settle a lawsuit over the tens of thousands of American clients suspected of tax evasion, the Swiss newspaper Sonntag reported. Analysts on Monday, however, questioned the figure.” [DealBook/NYT]
A Unified Bank Regulator Is a Good Start – Penned by rock star CEO, Jamie Dimon [WSJ]
Review Comments | 06.26.09
Lewis Retains Support of Key BofA Executive – [DealBook/NYT]
What the Big 4 do – “I explained that in my opinion the Big 4 firms have two fundamental purposes in life when it comes to tax. First they exist to undermine the tax revenues of governments. Second they exist to redistribute the wealth of the world from those who are poorest in the communities in which they work to those who are the richest in the communities in which they work.” Ouch [Tax Research UK]
Madoff Family Feud: Ruth, Sons Won’t Attend Monday Sentencing – Probably not a bad move…[ABC News]
New Bail Hearing for Stanford Set for Monday Because He Just Might Split
Stan the Man will spend the weekend pumping iron in a Houston jail because all signs are kinda, sorta pointing to the possibility of him going on the lam after a judge granted the silver medalist in the Ponzi competition a measly $500,000 bail.
Stanford’s attorney called bullshit because “he had already shown the financier was no flight threat.”
Judge David Hittner didn’t buy it and remanded Stan to jail until Monday based on the evidence presented by prosecutors:
testimony from a pilot who flew Mr. Stanford to Libya and Switzerland before government officials raided his Houston offices; testimony from a friend of Mr. Stanford’s daughter who gave him $36,000 in cash, and claims that $100 million was withdrawn from a Swiss bank account Mr. Stanford controlled
C’mon, your honor, that’s just walking around money! My client can’t be expected to strut around without serious money on hand!
New Bail Hearing Set for Stanford [WSJ]
PCAOB, We Need to Have a Talk
PCAOB, we here at Going Concern want to help you get some respect. We really do.
We don’t think it’s fair that people think you’re slow at writing rules for auditors. Okay, maybe you could pick up the pace a little bit but we know that it takes a lot of work and patience to write those rules. But then we heard about this and we want to let you know that we aren’t angry, you’re just letting us down.
Reuters:
The U.S. audit watchdog voted on Thursday to defer its first inspection on 49 foreign auditors in areas such as the European Union, China and Switzerland for up to three years.
Like we said, we’re not mad. We’re disappointed.
US PCAOB delays 1st review of 49 foreign auditors [Reuters]
Deloitte: Folding Like a Cheap Lawn Chair?
Is it possible that the spinelessness of the FASB is spreading some of the firms?
Motely Foley is reporting that MGM Mirage got the Big D to drop the going concern language from its “financial assessment” which we confirmed with the author, Bob Steyer, that indeed meant the audit opinion.
Doing a little digging on this whole sitch, we found that MGM has done some duct tape repairs to its balance sheet in order to convince its banks and Big D that nothing is fucked.
Deloitte, wanting to be troopers and all, probably just had to step back from the whole thing to get perspective. “Yeah, when you look at it from back here, $14.4 Billion in debt doesn’t really look that bad.”
MGM Back From the Brink — for Now [Motley Fool]
Scoping | 06.26.09
• Stanford Enters Plea; Bail Is Set at $500,000 [New York Times]
• After Madoff: Are We Safer? The question should be “Are people any smarter?” because….[Business Week]
• This happened: Pang Took $83 Million From Firm, Filings Say. So we’d be inclined to say that people might be safe but their money sure as hell isn’t. [WSJ]
Review Comments | 06.25.09
Beware the off-balance sheet return – [FT.com]
Confusion threat to global fair value – [Accountancy Age]
What Caused Our Burnout? – Google Reader for us [The Onion]
