Since it’s summer, it’s inevitable that many of you will receive an invitation to a company pool party, BBQ, ball game, etc. For many accountants, fashion is an afterthought at the office. Blue shirt or white shirt today? Black trousers or khakis? Not a terribly fashion forward bunch. In fact, we might go so far to say, fashion Neanderthals.
However, when an event outside of the office occurs, the need for non-work attire arises. Some bean counters will still don trousers and button-ups because well, they’re lame. For the more free-spirited among us, this is the opportunity to cut loose.
The Journal has a stuffy piece about what’s “appropriate” at these corporate outings. We here at Going Concern want you to ignore social conventions and go with your gut when preparing for these summer corporate get-togethers.
Do you look fab in a super-tiny speedo? We say ROCK IT! Looking to wear a t-shirt from your favorite strip club? Wear it PROUD! Been waiting for the perfect opportunity to wear that new skirt that shows off those fantastic gams? We’re ALL FOR IT!
The Journal is concerned about “knowing” your co-workers too well and their inability to get that image of you in your velour tracksuit out their heads. We say, GET YOURSELF OUT THERE! Life is far too short to be held down by fashion impotent bean counters who can’t pull off tight leather shorts.
Overexposed: Surviving The Corporate Outing [WSJ]
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IASB Chairman Would Like the SEC to Get With It
Sir David Tweedie, IASB Chairman, would sure appreciate it if the SEC would make up its damn mind about whether or not to commit to converging U.S. GAAP with IFRS. He spoke at the American Association of Accountants (AAA) annual meeting in New York yesterday and figured he might as well call out the SEC, who seems to be stonewalling him. He’s giving them until 2011 to figure it out.
Tweedie has been making like some kind of financial reporting missionary, going all around the world preaching the good word of IFRS. He’s said he’ll have 150 believers by 2011. But everywhere he goes, all anyone can talk about is whether the U.S. is converted yet.
More, after the jump
“That is a question I am asked all around the world. The convergence program is designed to reduce the cost of transition. FASB is riding two horses: US GAAP and trying to converge at the same time, but so are we.”…If you’re going to have global standards, we need the US, but it can’t go on indefinitely,” he said
We’re impressed that the knighted bean counter is putting his foot down here. We figured the SEC and the FASB could just continue doing whatever it is they do and Tweedie would just keeping asking them about it every month or so like they owed him fifty bucks.
Tweedie Warns of 2011 Deadline for IFRS Choice [Web CPA via Accountancy Age]
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Legg Mason to Financial Crisis: 100 Years, You.
That’s it. It’s official. Worst. Crisis. Ever. If Legg Mason is your gauge on financial crisises, that is.
And since it is such a momentous occasion, guess what this calls for…wait for it…executive bonuses!
Courtesy of footnoted.org, we learn that Chairman and CEO, Mark Fetting’s received approximately a $3M bonus for “leadership of the company during one of the worst financial crises of the last 100 years, which particularly affected financial services companies”
Footnoted goes on to give us some perspective:
Just to make sure, we did a quick check for the word crisis (or crises) at other financial services companies and didn’t come up with anything that even came close. While the word was used in several other proxies, it wasn’t used in a way to justify a bonus and there were no pronouncements about this being the “worst financial crises”.
Okay, so Legg has some melodramatic types writing their filings. But how about some chicanery?:
Equally interesting is that while the board set Fetting’s bonus at 21% of the bonus pool in June 2008, Legg Mason’s loss of $1.9 billion last year meant that there was no bonus pool. But that didn’t stop the bonus because as the comp committee writes in the proxy the net loss was due to just two items and without those two items, the company “would have had net income, and the plan would have produced a total bonus pool large enough to accommodate the annual incentive awards made. Although the terms of the plan do not explicitly provide for the exclusion of those items, the Committee considered the items to be extraordinary expense.”
Seriously, who’s going to let two measly items stop them from paying executives bonuses out of a bonus pool that didn’t really exist? This is financial wartime people, we will not be denied.
Legg Mason calls it: The worst financial crisis [footnoted.org]