Rochester Industry Conference Draws Participants from Far and Near

Rochester Industry Conference Draws Participants from Far and Near
By John J. Lauchert

An upstate conference for members in industry drew a good number of attendees from as far and wide as Binghamton, Utica and Buffalo.

The Fifth Annual Western Regional Members in Industry and Commerce Conference on May 19 in Rochester featured several speakers on a variety of topics, from tax legislation to doing business in China to internal control and ethics.

Presenter David Joranko, a partner with Ernst & Young, discussed pending bills in the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives that would eliminate favorable extraterritorial income (ETI) taxation treatment previously afforded to taxpayers doing business internationally. The most significant aspects of pending legislation include providing a deduction for qualified U.S. production activities income and reduction of the federal income tax rate for income from qualified production activities.

Speaker Irene Chiu, an associate attorney with Morgan, Lewis & Bockius LLP, discussed considerations for doing business in China. Chiu emphasized the importance of selection of entity, the significance of relationships (“guanxi”) and recently enacted initiatives liberalizing previous restrictions on wholly owned foreign entities (WOFE).

Later, James Watters, of the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT), and Daniel Hedberg, of Monad Associates, headed up a discussion on best practices for managing growth. Watters talked about how RIT has dealt with a rapidly growing student enrollment and concomitant increase in teacher salaries.

Hedberg discussed the need for organizations to create strategies to develop unified missions, principles, goals, performance measures and action plans. This is important, he said, to establish and track key performance measurements over time, adjusting operational plans as necessary to attain goals.

Franco Strangis, a manager with the Carrier Corporation, followed the panel with a listing of steps corporate accounting departments should take to integrate newly acquired businesses.

Scandals and Ethics

Martha Lipp, of Beacon Consulting Group, discussed mutual fund scandals, noting that since September 2003 many mutual fund companies have been implicated in late-trading and market-timing activities, prompting governmental action that has resulted in independent, board-driven investigations and short-term redemption fees. But, she said, settlements paid by fund companies were minimal as a percentage of plan assets.

Plan sponsors should respond by evaluating performance, disclosing facts regarding tainted funds to plan participants, holding investment committee meetings, checking investments against the plan’s investment policy statement, reviewing indemnification insurance and analyzing fund fees, among others steps, she said.

Finally, Robert Colson, editor-in-chief of The CPA Journal, spoke on internal controls and ethics and the need to balance personal, family and professional aspects of ethical matters confronting practitioners in the performance of their duties.

“We, as a profession, are responsible to the public interest, unlike attorneys and doctors, who advocate for their clients or patients,” Colson said.

John J. Lauchert, CFO of Data Ventures, Inc., in Rome, N.Y., is a member of the Society’s Board of Directors.