FASB’s Tort Bar Gift [WSJ]
“In the eternal war between the plaintiffs bar and corporations, the lawsuit pack already owns the Senate and Now it seems the nation’s accountants want to give the lawyers another edge.
The Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) will soon begin considering whether to require companies to account for the potential cost of ongoing litigation. Supporters insist this is merely about disclosure, but the proposal would hurt investors by offering roadmaps for new litigation and bigger settlements. We first wrote about this in 2008, and FASB retreated amid a business backlash. But FASB’s revised proposal, issued last month, isn’t much better.
Take the provision requiring companies to disclose their liability insurance coverage. Lawyers would be able to target their damage requests to the coverage maximum, or launch new lawsuits in the knowledge that more insurance dollars remain. This is why judges typically insist that coverage only be divulged under a secrecy order.”
Emmy votes are in and now it’s time to start counting [Los Angeles Times]
“With the Emmy Awards just a week and a half away, Ernst & Young LLP, the accounting firm in charge of counting the thousands of votes, will now kick into high gear figuring out who will be going home with a trophy come Aug. 29.
The deadline to get ballots in was 5 p.m. Tuesday. The last vote, as always, was turned in by veteran actress Jody Carter, who actually comes down to the firm’s downtown offices to fill out her ballot in person and turn it in to Andy Sales, the Ernst & Young lead partner for the prime-time Emmy Awards.”
Judge Denounces a Barclays Settlement [Reuters]
“The judge, Emmet G. Sullivan of Federal District Court, said at a hearing Tuesday that he was concerned about the proposed deal in which the bank had agreed to pay $298 million to resolve the charges over its dealings with Cuba, Iran, Libya, Sudan and Myanmar.
“This is a sweetheart deal,” Judge Sullivan said, adding that the average American citizen who gets caught robbing a bank does not get a deferred prosecution agreement, as Barclays did.
PricewaterhouseCoopers Calls on Organizations to Manage Diversity with their ‘Heads, Hearts and Wallets’ [PR Newswire]
“Organizations that leverage diverse talent and manage diversity with their ‘heads, hearts and wallets’ will gain long-term competitive advantages, noted Greg Garrison, Partner and Vice Chairman, PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP (PwC), in a keynote speech at the 2010 Ascend Annual Gala. Ascend is a 5,000-member professional leadership organization dedicated to leveraging the potential of pan-Asians.
Though organizations typically approach diversity from three perspectives — the head, which looks at diversity academically; the heart, which view it in moral terms; and the wallet, which ties diversity efforts directly to the bottom line — unsuccessful diversity commitments often occur because organizations approach the effort from just one of those mindsets.
‘Successful leaders approach diversity using all three lenses,’ stressed Garrison. ‘Looking through these lenses, leaders must act upon what they see and anticipate what is to come to successfully shape the talent that will drive business performance.’ “
Office-Leasing Rebound Could Be Deceiving [WSJ]
“In New York, accounting giant Deloitte recently asked the city for $11 million in tax breaks that would support a consolidation of its New York offices at 4 World Financial Center in downtown Manhattan. Under the lease deal, which isn’t final, Deloitte—which now occupies some 934,000 square feet of office space in the city—would eventually move those operations into just 390,000 square feet at 4 World Financial Center, with options to expand to 630,000 square feet.
Deloitte would spend more than $90 million on building and fitting out the space with a new, more efficient design, according to its application for the tax breaks.”
IRS Probes Apple Employee for Kickbacks [Debits & Credits]
“A grand jury charged Apple’s global supply manager, Paul Shin Devine, who was responsible for selecting suppliers of enclosure materials for headsets for the iPhone and iPod. According to Justice Department prosecutors, who carried out a joint investigation with the IRS’s Criminal Investigation division and the FBI, Devine allegedly transmitted confidential internal Apple information to suppliers in China, Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan. In return, the suppliers agreed to pay him kickbacks, including payments based on a percentage of the business they did with Apple.”
SaaS switching – should we care? [AccMan]
“In theory at least, a SaaS/cloud approach makes it very easy to switch and the cost is relatively low, provided there isn’t a huge amount of data that needs unpicking and reforming. There is no throwing away of capital investments so no need to justify the decision in the same way you would if you’d installed an on-premise solution. Service providers that offer a freemium approach or a limited try-before-you-buy arrangement may appear attractive but even then it is only as you start to iron out the wrinkles that you find where the weaknesses lay.”
I agree with Buffett’s view. This new accounting rule, requiring Available-for-Sale securities’ unrealized gains and losses to be included in net income, will lead to wild swings in net income. As the market (Stock market and Bond market) goes through up and down cycles, so too does the fair value of these Available-for-Sale securities (stock and debt securities). Therefore, there will be wide range amounts for unrealized gains and losses. As a result, net income will be greatly affected, leading to wild swings. Also, profitability ratios will be greatly affected. The smart investment analysts will take out these Available-for-Sale securities’ unrealized gains and losses to normalize net income for investment analysis. FASB needs to make up its mind. If I remember correctly from college, the reason FASB decided to require that Available-for-Sale securities’ unrealized gains and losses be EXCLUDED from net income (I believe it was the early 1990s when the rule was made) was because it would lead to large net income volatility and affect performance measures. Now, FASB is saying that INCLUDING these unrealized gains and losses in net income would be a better measure of a company’s performance. Jeesh, make up your mind. The same thing is going to happen just like when FASB changed the rule about financial liabilities’ recognition. In about 2007, FASB introduced the Fair Value Option rule for financial liabilities’ recognition. As a result, companies that chose the fair value option started to record wild swings for unrealized gains and losses. This in turn caused net income to be volatile for these companies. Sorry for the long post. I’m a technical accounting geek!