April 2009
AmEx: Show Me the Tax Return
David Lazarus from the L.A. Times reports that credit card company American Express has, in what a company spokeswoman called “isolated cases,” required certain card holders to send in copies of their tax returns in order to keep their accounts going. This is to prove that the customer has the ability to actually pay them.
Inside the Mind of the SEC
Have you ever wondered what the Securities and Exchange Commission tells its employees to look for in examinations of a company's financial statements?
Wonder no more, thanks to some light reading from the agency's Division of Corporation Finance.
The SEC's 274-page internal training manual -- recently updated and renamed the Financial Reporting Manual -- is now available online. The agency has also made its constant revision and maintenance a major goal, according to Wayne Carnall, chief accountant of the Division of Corporation Finance, who spoke today at a financial reporting conference held at Baruch College.
Once upon a time, the public was not meant to be privy to this information, but earlier releases of the manual were met with a flood of Freedom of Information Law requests, showing the agency exactly how badly executives and accountants wanted to understand compliance.
"People would line up around the corner," Carnall said. Check it out online (without waiting on line): Read the table of contents. Or view the pdf.
PCAOB Releases Fair Value Practice Alert
The Public Company Accounting Oversight Board is following the Financial Accounting Standards Board's fair value example with its release of a Staff Audit Practice Alert to inform auditors of public companies about potential implications related to the application of the three FASB pronoucements relaxing mark-to-market accounting rules, which are:
Ernst & Young Withdraws Swine Flu Confirmation
Less than a day after confirming to numerous media outlets -- including WCBS TV, which broke the story -- that one of its New York City employees had been diagnosed with swine flu, Big Four firm Ernst & Young today withdrew that confirmation.
The Madoff You Never Met
Aside from that one monumental confession, Bernie Madoff's been mum about his $65 billion Ponzi scheme. Others, however, are piping up -- about him.
A lengthy report from Fortune relies heavily on interviews with various Madoff employees, who provide details of the disagraced money manager's peculiar personality. Some of the story's (all alleged) revelations:
- Madoff didn't use email. His computer was set up only to provide him with financial news.
- He had a two-foot sculpture of a screw behind his desk, which he personally dusted and polished (there's a joke in here somewhere).
- He was a neat freak, even bending down in the lobby of his building in a tailored suit to perfectly align the rugs on the floor.
- He was obsessed with symmetry. When Madoff was in the office, all window blinds had to be set at exactly the same height and all computer screens had to be arrayed at the same angle and position.
- Everything in the office had to be either black or grey -- even pushpins in employees' cubicles.
- Madoff was a "locker guard" (basically, a hall monitor) in high school, and he and his wife were sweethearts beginning around eighth grade. Wonder if she knew what he was up to?
- He was once a victim of fraud -- he lost $85,000 to con artist Jack Dick in the 1960s.
May Expo Offers CPE Galore
What’s on your calendar for May 12 and 13? If you’re not yet planning to power through half of your CPE requirements for the year in two days, maybe you should.
You can earn up to 14 CPE credits in a two-day period at the 2009 Accounting and Business Expo, and the CPE is affordable. This year’s expo is taking place at two new locations: the Long Island Marriott in Uniondale on May 12 and 13 (101 James Doolittle Boulevard, Uniondale, NY 11553). A second expo will take place upstate in October at the Turning Stone Hotel and Casino in Verona, which is located between Syracuse and Utica.
CFO Suicide Delays Debt Offering
Mortgage finance company Freddie Mac said today it will postpone an announcement about the pricing of a debt offering because of the sudden death of the company's acting CFO.
No Placement Agents in Pension Deals
State Comptroller Thomas P. DiNapoli has banned the involvement of placement agents in investments with the New York State Common Retirement Fund.
The ban includes paid intermediaries and registered lobbyists “compensated on a flat fee, a contingent fee or any other basis.”
The NYSSCPA's First Legislative Battle
You're likely well aquainted with the NYSSCPA's efforts over the past decade to get the accounting reform bill signed into law. But did you know the NYSSCPA has lobbied politically to protect and advance the profession since its very beginning?
One of the Society's first acts—noted in the minutes to its first annual meeting on May 10, 1897—was the creation of a legislative committee to oppose a change to the accounting law passed the previous year. The amendment would have offered mobility to foreign accountants, allowing them to become certified in New York state “without taking into consideration their qualifications as public accountants or their standing as to moral character.”
NYSSCPA Issues Comments to PCAOB, AICPA
The NYSSCPA has released two new comment letters, one to the PCAOB regarding its proposed auditing standard for engagement quality review, and a second to the AICPA addressing its proposed statement on auditing standards for compliance audits.