When accounting goes unaccounted for
In our third edition of #WhatsNext, we're going to talk about Results Only Work Environments ("ROWE"). Wait, what?
Yeah, you may have never heard of it, so no worries, we're going to talk about the basics and get into some particulars as well. Watch the whole thing below.
CFO Departures Often Involve Career Moves: Study [CFOJ]According to Audit Analytics, out of 290 CFO […]
Jobs Quits as Apple CEO [WSJ]
Apple said Mr. Jobs submitted his resignation to the board of directors on Wednesday and “strongly recommended” that the board name Mr. Cook as his successor. Mr. Job been elected chairman of the board and Mr. Cook will join the board, effective immediately, the company said. “I have always said if there ever came a day when I could no longer meet my duties and expectations as Apple’s CEO, I would be the first to let you know,” Mr. Jobs said in his resignation letter. “Unfortunately, that day has come.”
Management Faces Task of Keeping Momentum [WSJ]
The executives who will now run Apple without Mr. Jobs will face big tests of whether they can still excel in highly competitive businesses that often have small profit margins. “Can they hit the next home run?” asks Charles O’Reilly, a professor at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business. “Because if they don’t, they’re in a bunch of bad businesses.”
Grant Thornton CEO on Mandatory Audit Rotation [CFOJ]
Nusbaum: “There’s a natural inclination among accounting firms for anything like mandatory firm rotation to raise the hair on the back of our necks and make us very nervous, because we don’t want to give up clients. We have a lot of clients and of course we always think we’re doing a great job with them. But I think we as a profession have to be open minded and look at all the ways we can improve audit quality. But it’s a difficult decision. The PCAOB is in the unique position to see how all the firms operate, to see how we do audits, what we do well and what we do poorly and how we can improve.”
Trust No One, Particularly Not Groupon’s Accountants [Grumpy Old Accountants]
The grumpies start really digging into Groupon.
Warning to budget mavens: ‘Tax expenditures’ may yield less than expected [WaPo]
Don’t forget, there are 180 tax expenditures in this tax code, which are really tax earmarks, which are really spending by any other name, and you get rid of those and start picking them off, and you can save billions and billions of bucks.
Buffett’s $7 Million Sacrifice Is Only a Start [Jonathan Weil/Bloomberg]
Whenever the leadership class feels nervous, you can count on some of them to offer the less-moneyed masses a bone to demonstrate they care. Warren Buffett says his idea of “shared sacrifice” is higher taxes on the super-rich. Only for him, this wouldn’t cost much.
Americans renounce citizenship over taxes [WFP]
Ohio-born Julie Veilleux spent the first eight years of her life in the United States but has lived in Canada for nearly 40 years. She became a Canadian citizen in 1995 and was told by the citizenship judge she was no longer an American. But Veilleux is among thousands of Canadians who could get caught up in a U.S. tax dragnet called the Offshore Voluntary Disclosure Initiative, or OVDI. It’s an amnesty program that promises reduced fines and penalties for Americans living abroad who catch up on unfiled tax returns. But it still threatens penalties of $10,000 or more for every bank account, RRSP or other savings account not declared from 2003 to 2010.
Swiss Parliament Backs UBS Pact [WSJ]
After a short standoff in Swiss parliament, Swiss lawmakers approved the agreement with the U.S. to turn over the remaining names of UBS clients, per the agreement between the two countries. The lower house dropped the referendum proposal that would have delayed the release of the names and likely caused UBS to miss the August deadline which would have resulted in new charges against the Swiss behemoth.
The Journal reports that a Swiss government is prepared to release an additional 1,200 names following the initial 500 released last year.
Lawmakers Weigh Changes to stor Protections [Bloomberg BusinessWeek]
Congress is kicking around the possibility of an office within the SEC to respond to whistleblower complaints. Brilliant!
McGladrey Mourns the Loss of Former Partner Ray Krause
Mr Krause passed away on Monday after 40 years of service to both McGladrey and the accounting profession. He served on many professional standard setting groups including AICPA’s Accounting Standards Executive Committee, the Financial Accounting Standards Board’s Emerging Issues Task Force, and on the Financial Accounting Standards Advisory Council. H was memorialized by his friend and colleague Jay Hanson, McGladrey’s National Director of Accounting:
Ray died unexpectedly yesterday. He was on vacation in Orlando with his nine-year-old grandson doing what he loved—visiting Disney World.
Before his retirement six years ago, Ray spent more than 40 years with McGladrey. He practiced in a number of locations, including a long stop in the national office as national director of accounting. He retired as partner in 2004 but continued to work for the national office part-time in Rockford, Ill.
During his long career, he served in a number of professional standard setting groups, including the AICPA’s Accounting Standards Executive Committee, the Financial Accounting Standards Board’s Emerging Issues Task Force, and on the Financial Accounting Standards Advisory Council.
Ray is best remembered for being the consummate professional and his easy-going style. He was very well respected in the accounting profession. Comments coming in from those that knew him include: “Ray was one of the true gentlemen of the accounting profession,” and “Ray was about as fine a human being as there is.”
He was a great mentor to many colleagues in the national office. His style of giving his complete attention to whomever he was talking to, providing understandable explanations for complex topics, probing deeply for all the facts, and his uncanny ability to help draw a conclusion with full understanding will be greatly missed. Ray could convey the message to someone that they were getting to the wrong conclusion with such delicacy that you didn’t even feel it, and felt good about the answer. He knew many of the “back stories” about how and why some of the most complex accounting standards came about, which is often important to understand what they mean.
Ray will be greatly missed by his daughter, son, four grandchildren and other family and friends. McGladrey and the accounting profession have also suffered a great loss.
Inquiry Ends on Cassano, Once of AIG [WSJ]
The SEC has dropped its investigation of Joseph Cassano, the former head of AIG’s Financial Products Unit, which means he won’t face civil charges in the unit’s role in financial crisis. The SEC is also declining to pursue charges against another AIGFP executive, Andrew Forster, who was also under scrutiny.
Senator sees big reporting gap in stock options [AP]
Senator Carl “Shitty Deal” Levin and new Snooki BFF John McCain “have proposed legislation that would require that the tax deduction for stock options not exceed the expense for options reported in financial statements.”
The two are a little rankled about the $52 billion gap between the amount of stock option expenses recognized for financial reporting purposes and the expense reported for tax purposes. Guess who’s getting the short end on that one?
Bank auditors were fully involved in developing report [FT]
John Hitchens, head of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of England and Wales (ICAEW) and a PwC Partner would like to dispel any notion that auditors will resist reform after taking it on the chin for the financial crisis:
As chairman of the ICAEW working group that produced the proposals, I would like to correct this impression.
Bank auditors from the six largest audit firms were fully involved in developing the report and supportive of all its recommendations, including the proposal that banks develop summary risk statements which auditors would then give comfort over.
Feel better?
U.K. Scraps FSA in Biggest Bank Overhaul Since 1997 [Bloomberg]
Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne will do away with the Financial Services Authority, replacing it with three new regulatory bodies and giving most of its oversight powers to the Bank of England.
Intuit Works to Restore Online Access [WSJ]
Any individuals or small businesses that use TurboTax, Quicken and QuickBooks have been in a world of hurt as online access has been down, down, down. “Some Intuit websites were beginning to come back online late Wednesday afternoon,” according to an Intuit spokesperson. The situation is fluid.
Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac to delist from NYSE [CNN]
Meant to mention this yesterday since it was the DoD but you know how it goes. Anyway, see you another life FNM and FRE.