If you’ve got a Swiss bank account, here’s hoping you opened it because it was convenient for your monthly skiing/Toblerone getaway.
The U.S. and Swiss governments have agreed to share more tax information in order to crack down on all the tax dodgers out there that send their money offshore. The timing of this agreement is is especially diabolical because the IRS is currently trying to get Swiss bank behemoth UBS to name names of over 50,000 American clients.
Hearings in Miami are scheduled for next month to see if the names can be released, however, the Swiss have stated that this may violate Swiss law of double-secret-no-tattling-on-clients.
Ultimately, the Swiss Federal Council and Parliament will decide if the new agreement is kosh but judging by the Obama Administration’s hard-on for closing tax loopholes, they’ll probably play ball.
U.S. and Switzerland to Share More Tax Data [DealBook/NYT]
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Fraud Risk, Staffing Reductions, and OJ Logic at CFO.com
- GoingConcern
- December 16, 2009
Editor’s Note: Robert Stewart is a former Big 4 auditor and ex-Marine who has since served in several executive management roles in both Internal Audit and Corporate Finance. He is also the founder and chief contributor to the online accounting and audit community, The Accounting Nation. Outside of work, he is a husband, father, brother, writer, uate aspiring triathlete.
You can always count on CFO.com for logic flaws and surface reporting. It’s like drinking that concentrated orange juice in a can when you add three parts too much water and then put ice cubes in it because it’s warm, which makes it even more watery which… Where was I going with this?
Oh yeah. In one of their latest articles, entitled “As Internal Audit Staffs Shrink, Will Fraud Rise?“, the author portends — based on a Deloitte survey and subsequent interview — that the decrease in internal audit personnel somehow increases the risk of organizational exposure to fraud. What? Ever hear the phrase “Correlation is not Causation”? Symptom or cause.
Here’s my $0.02: such staffing reductions may increase the risk that fraud will go undetected (though only nominally given that IA only uncovers about 12% percent of frauds according to the ACFE’s Report to the Nation), but the risk to the organization more than likely remains constant, right? Am I missing something here?
After all, Internal Audit is a downstream event unless you make the argument that the organizational perception of being “watched” has diminished with the reductions in internal audit/compliance staffing, thus emboldening would-be fraudsters (i.e. strengthening the “opportunity” leg of Cressey’s Fraud Triangle). But this article doesn’t make that argument.
The article further states that:
Despite the reduction in compliance personnel, 50% of respondents to the Deloitte survey, who included CFOs, CEOs, board members, and middle managers in finance and risk management, said their compliance and ethics programs are strong. Another 36% said they are adequate. Many public companies and some private companies invested significantly in their compliance programs after the passage of Sarbox in 2002, notes Francis, and they may now feel confident that those programs are effective even with a reduced staff. But that confidence may not always be justified.
Confidence? I would hardly call the above percentages “confidence” on the part of the respondents. If I told you that 50% of the airline pilots felt that their pre-flight checklist procedures were strong, how would you feel about flying? No F*#$ing way I’m getting on that plane.
The words wrapped around the survey results and subsequent interview quotes don’t at all support the conclusion that this article is trying to draw. Perhaps it’s because the survey was designed and administered by a firm (Deloitte) that has a vested interest in drumming up some business through fear tactics? After all, you’re never going to hear a burglar alarm company extolling the improvements in public safety.
And you’re never going to hear a company that sells risk-related services conducting and publicly releasing results that don’t support their strategic objectives. Or perhaps it’s just bad writing at CFO.com in order to satisfy a quota? The World may never know (I think the World will be fine with this). Either way, I’ve wasted double the amount of time that I should have on this topic (i.e. read it and wrote about it). And so with that…I bid you adieu.
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Preliminary Analytics | 09.30.09
- Caleb Newquist
- September 30, 2009
• November Deadline Set for Kraft’s Cadbury Offer – Wonderful. We’re going to hear about cheese substance made by robots trying to copulate with sweet confections for another month. [DealBook]
• CIT Said to Weigh Financing From Citigroup, Barclays – What? They didn’t call this one? [Bloomberg]
• Bank-Bailout Fund Faces Years in Red as Failures Jolt System – “FDIC officials stressed that the fund’s depleted state wouldn’t affect depositors because federally insured deposits are backed by the full faith and credit of the U.S. government.” Oh, well that’s a relief then. [WSJ]
• Plenty More Bank Losses Expected Globally – When will this happen? [WSJ]
• UBS Warns on Third-Quarter Losses – Wow. That was fast. [WSJ]
• Confidence surges among CFOs in US – It feels like the confidence has been surging for some time now. [FT]
• Auditing the Fed: Redux – Our contributor, Adrienne Gonzalez got linked over at FT Alphaville. Nice work! [JDA]
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Accenture, Feeling Left Out, Gets Our Attention
- Caleb Newquist
- August 15, 2009
Since Andersen went the way of the dodo almost ten years ago, Accenture has been moseying along just doing whatever it is they do. They’ve done a pretty decent job of getting people to forget that they were once part of the Big 5 4.
Since we’re pretty sure there are plenty of you out there that have friends, former colleagues, sworn enemies, and booty calls at Accenture we thought we’d pass along that they are rumored to be getting into the pay freezing spirit.
Get some details, after the jump
Apparently an email went out today stating that “Most individuals will not receive an increase in base pay.” But if you’re one of the lucky few getting a promotion you’ve got a shred of hope, “People being promoted will receive an increase in base pay only if they are below the minimum salary range for their new career level.” Awesome.
This seems very curious because at least Accenture’s super star golfer sponsoree is playing well while someone else is screwing the pooch and risking a RIF.
So if you know some Accenturites pass this along and see if they know just WTF is going on in the Haunted House of Andersen. If you ARE an Accenturite, get us the info on this whole sitch at tips@goingconcern.com. Their PR has apparently checked out for the weekend already and we’re not probably going to hear anything until Monday but we’ll update accordingly.