GRC

We need some tech savvy accountants in Parliament

March 31, 2009 General

The other day I was bemoaning the cost to the taxpayer of dumping the Dumfermline Building Society. I said we need some number crunchers in Parliament. Today, it is MP’s expenses and we still need number crunchers. Courtesy of a Tweet from a very annoyed Martyn Shiner, I discover over at Letters from a Tory: [...]

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Rules are meant to be broken

September 1, 2008 General

While the brooh-ha-ha continues in the US over the introduction of IFRS, I am delighted to see that Francine McKenna nails its importance in unequivocal language when comparing to the way US GAAP operates: Rules are meant to be broken and gotten around. Better to judge professionals on their judgement, and let them take full [...]

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People who matter: Francine McKenna

August 15, 2008 General

I spent most of this week in Boston as the guest of SAP (of which more later) but flights being what they are, I had a spare day before returning to Spain. I’d pinged Francine McKenna to say I would be vaguely local and to my surprise, she made the trip from Chicago to meet [...]

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Sir David Tweedie: unbowed

August 11, 2008 General

One of the rare advantages of travel is the opportunity to pick up an English newspaper. This morning’s Spanish edition of the Daily Telegraph had a profile of Sir David Tweedie who according to the article is: “The most hated accountant in Britain and the World.”  I wouldn’t go THAT far but his almost complete [...]

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Over complicating things is a bad idea

August 6, 2008 General

My Irregular chum Jason Busch talks about the misery of over complicating life by injecting too much by way of rules into ‘getting things done.’ In the buy-side contracting world, I’ve seen strict “rules” around indemnification, for example, get in the way of agreements, not to mention cost savings. Perhaps we should take a more [...]

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Should we be concerned over new Reg FD guidance?

August 1, 2008 General

Over at ZDNet, I’ve written an analysis of what I see as the possible impact of new SEC guidance under Reg FD. In essence, the SEC is pointing the way towards company websites and blogs in particular being used as an alternative medium by which information is made available to the public. It’s a novel [...]

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What really happened at Levis?

July 22, 2008 General

Mike Krigsman endeavours to dissect the impact of the SAP ERP implementation on Levi’s accounts quoting liberally from the company’s latest 10-Q quarterly filing. Other titles jump on the claim made by Levi’s that: We ran into technical issues going through the implementation process, which interrupted shipping for about a week. We experienced shipping delays [...]

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Fair value causing problems in the US

July 17, 2008 General

CFO.com has come out with an article that makes a lot of sense to me. It will take more than a change in rules to make companies comfortable with the move to fair value accounting. It will take a change in “mindset,” predicts Gary Kabureck, the chief accountant and corporate vice president at Xerox Corp. [...]

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Are the Big 4 risking too much?

June 26, 2008 General

These days I leave the flaying of the Big Four to Francine McKenna but today I can’t help but comment on her analysis of the KPMG case involving Independent Insurance Group that saw the firm and partner Andrew Sayers fined £500,000 with £1.15 million in costs. Rather than dwell on her excellent analysis I’d prefer [...]

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