Please ensure Javascript is enabled for purposes of website accessibility

Accounting News Roundup: GOP Targeting IRS Funding to Stall Healthcare; Grant Thornton, BDO Merge in South Africa; What Your Recruiter Isn’t Telling You | 10.26.10

IRS Funding A Target In Health-Care Implementation Battle [Dow Jones]
Funding for the Internal Revenue Service could become a battleground in the next Congress as Republicans seek to halt implementation of the new health-care law.

GOP candidates are running on a pledge to repeal that law. But some repeal advocates say a strategy of choking off funding to the IRS and federal health agencies is more politically viable.

“Repeal is not within the set of possible outcomes while President Obama holds his veto pen. However, a defunding strategy could throw sand in the gear bring it to a near standstill,” said Michael Cannon, director of health policy studies at the libertarian Cato Institute.

Stephen Lukens Named Grant Thornton LLP Advisory Services Leader [Business Wire]
Another Stephen! Mr Lukens came on board from IBM Global Business Services and was with PwC Consulting prior to Big Blue’s purchase of the practice.

Accountant describes ‘totally’ different transaction between GM and Delphi [Crain’s]
A forensic accountant testifying at former Delphi Corp. CEO J.T. Battenberg’s civil fraud trial in a federal courtroom in Detroit today said that the auto supplier recorded on its books a payment to its largest customer, General Motors, “totally differently from” the actual transaction conducted by the supplier and its former parent company.

Merger will create new accounting giant [Business Day]
THE merger between Grant Thornton and BDO Cape, which will become effective next Monday, will create the biggest accounting firm in SA’s mid-tier market , followed by Mazars.

The deal positions the merged firm to obtain more work, particularly from privately held businesses and listed companies. Previously the two firms obtained most of their work from privately held businesses.

The firm, which will be led by Grant Thornton national chairman Leonard Brehm, will have a staff compliment of 900 and 97 partners and directors, with combined revenue of R400m.

In Finance Team Building, Xerox Copied No One [CFO]
[M]ajor groundwork was laid through a finance reorganization and team-building effort that Lawrence Zimmerman began eight years ago after ending his retirement from IBM to become Xerox vice chairman and CFO.

“The big change Larry brought was to make the accounting unit independent of all other organizations,” says Gary Kabureck, who stayed on as chief accounting officer after Zimmerman joined Xerox. “That was a huge, very positive change.” The independent model, says Kabureck, replaced a Xerox structure that had tied accounting to business units. Now, accounting is used for “measuring operational results, which may which may [sic] not be what the local operation manager wants them to be, but it’s what the CFO wants them to be.”

Grassley: Three years before unemployment’s back to normal [The Hill]
2013 doesn’t sound that bad.


PayPal Names Patrick Dupuis as Chief Financial Officer [Business Wire]
Pat got his chops at the likes of Sitel, BJC Healthcare and GE Healthcare.

Should you upgrade QuickBooks? [AccMan]
SaaS/cloud upgrade issues are NOT the customer’s problem. They lie with the developers. Contrast this with the advice being given for a QuickBooks upgrade. There is plenty to think about. The same broad principles will apply to any on-premise solution. That’s a fundamental difference SaaS/cloud vendors should emphasize a lot more than they do. SaaS/cloud upgrades are usually seamless to the end customer while bug fixes are often more or less invisible to the user.

10 Things Employment Recruiters Won’t Say [SmartMoney]
You mean this person may not be completely honest with you? GET OUT.

Accounting News Roundup: UBS Set to Release More Names as Standoff Ends; SEC Drops Cassano Inquiry; Levin, McCain Want Stock Option Gap Closed | 06.17.10

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 tostor 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.