Cornell Batie, CFO at Mack Avenue Records, as he appeared in Hour Detroit's 2013 Best Dressed List:
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When Booking Bogus Revenue, Ideally Your CFO Is the Type to Not Give a Rat’s Ass
- Caleb Newquist
- August 31, 2011
James Li and David Chow used to run a shop called Syntax-Brillian Company as the CEO and Chief Procurement Officer respectively. They sold high-def, LCD TVs under the Olevia brand in China. Problem was, they didn’t really sell TVs under the Olevia brand in China. According to the SEC:
[F]rom at least June 2006 through April 2008, Li and Chow engaged in a complex scheme to overstate Syntax’s financial results by publicly reporting significant sales of LCD televisions in China, when in fact the vast majority of these sales never occurred. Li and Chow initially concealed the scheme through the use of fake shipping and sales documents.
Of course, they couldn’t do it alone. They needed a CFO. A CFO who would backdate things when asked and ignore obvious signs of bogus revenue. That man was Wayne Pratt who, from the sounds of it, wasn’t too concerned about ANYTHING:
The SEC alleges that Wayne Pratt, Syntax’s Chief Financial Officer, ignored red flags of improper revenue recognition and participated in preparing backdated documentation that was provided to Syntax’s auditors to support fictitious fiscal 2006 year-end sales. Pratt also ignored indications of impaired assets, agency sales, and potential collectability issues.
So, budding criminals, get on the look out for a guy/gal who is accustomed to shrugging their shoulders and responding “Meh. Whatever.” to your demands. Should work out well for you.
Litigation Release [SEC]
Complaint [SEC]
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Your CFO Might Be Clueless about How IFRS Will Affect Your Company
- Caleb Newquist
- July 31, 2009
In some very comforting news, CFO’s in a recent poll said they’re unsure about how at transition to IFRS would affect their company.
More scary stats include 8% of those surveyed said that they are “very familiar” with how their company will be affected and 43% said they were not familiar at all. So what does all of this IFRS ignorance mean?
Check out the list after the jump
A) Lots of CFO’s don’t give a rat crap
2) Lots of CFO’s don’t really believe IFRS will come to the States
D) Lots of CFO’s need to work on their qualifications
The obtuseness may work out though. At the pace the conversion debate is going, by the time the conversion gets done we’ll all be dead.
Survey: CFOs unsure how international rules will affect U.S. business [DBJ]
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CFOs Want Tech Investments to Pay Off…Stat!
- GoingConcern
- September 15, 2010
This story is republished from CFOZone, where you’ll find news, analysis and professional networking tools for finance executives.
CFOs and CIOs have very different priorities when it comes to IT spending, and that dichotomy is not likely to change any time soon, even as IT budgets are starting to once again increase.
After being slashed to almost nil during the height of the crisis for many corporations across sector and size, IT budgets are beginning to rise.
But CFOs are keeping a keen eye on where that money is going and still expect a relatively swift return on investment (ROI) in order to consider anything beyond maintenance and upgrades.
They want to clearly see that ROI—whether it be through qualitative measures, like better compliance or improved risk management, or through quantitative measures like reductions in days sales outstanding (DSO) or decreased cost-per-check.
As Craig Himmelberger at SAP said in a recent interview I did for Global Finance magazine: “People don’t want to rip and replace systems that are still functioning well, so a lot of the investments we see now are incremental.”
This IT budget allocation is likely to continue for the near future, at any rate, regardless of what CIOs may want. However, there does have to be a balance. At some point when liquidity risk fears begin to subside, CFOs will once again be more open to their CIOs’ suggestions for IT spending.
And what CIOs want to see is more spend on innovation, as Ellen Pearlman noted in her blog on CIOZone.com last month.
She quoted CXO Art Sedighi as saying: “In the current time and environment, the biggest challenge is [to] convince upper management to open up their wallets again after almost 3 years. The IT staff has been pulling things together with nothing short of band-aids since 2008, and things are about [to] fall apart. All management sees is the fact that spending was down, and they survived.”
Pearlman points out that while most execs believe that IT innovation is important, companies have consistently slashed spend on innovation over the past decade. In an AT Kearney study, executives cited IT innovation spend of 30 percent in 1999, compared with just 14 percent by 2009.
In the study, 45 percent of IT budget went to improving operations and 41 percent went to business enablement/process improvement. Most respondents felt that 24 percent of the IT budget should be directed towards innovation.
The current budget split certainly meshes with the continued corporate focus on driving down costs across the working capital chain. Indeed, it may be quite some time before CIOs get their dream IT allocation.