Small, midsize firms encourage employees to get specialized training to help in winning clients. So writes Eilene Zimmerman in Crain’s New York Business, where she mentions American Institute for Expert Witness Education (AIEWE) courses: Sareena Sawhney is a detective of sorts. As a certified forensic financial analyst, she exposes a hidden world of fraud and negligence by analyzing financial transactions and reconstructing accounting records. Ms. Sawhney, a certified fraud examiner, is a director in the litigation and corporate financial advisory services group at Marks Paneth & Shron in midtown Manhattan. She investigates fraud for corporate and nonprofit organizations and determines if and…
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A Rogue Employee Might be On Your Payroll, Too So writes Sarah E. Needleman at the Wall Street Journal Law Blog, where she points out that small businesses tend to be more vulnerable to fraud than large firms: If a business as established and well off as UBS can suffer at the hands of one bad apple, could the same can be true for any business, even a small firm? According to various media reports, an alleged trading scheme at the Swiss investment bank went undetected for three years before it was finally discovered last week that a 31-year-old trader was apparently…
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Jack Nicholson Takes Over E.U. Finance FT’s Alphaville Blog reprises an ECB press conference last week: Reporter: What is your answer to German people and economists who want the return of the DM? Trichet: You want answers? Reporter: I think the Germans are entitled. Trichet: You want answers? (SHOUTING) Reporter: Germans want the truth! (SHOUTING) Trichet: *You can’t handle the truth!* (SHOUTING) [pauses]… Trichet: Son, we live in a world that has prices, and those prices have to be guarded by men with bonds. Who’s gonna do it? You? You, Sylvia Wadhwa? I have a greater responsibility than you could possibly fathom. You weep for…
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Adjusting, More M.D.’s Add M.B.A. Under heavy pressure from government regulators and insurance companies, more and more physicians across the country are learning to think like entrepreneurs, reports Milt Freudenheim at the New York Times: “All physicians need some kind of business training,” she said. “For example, some physicians with large research grants don’t know how to manage the money.” As for the nation’s troubled health system, “we are not running the business side very well,” Dr. Chandler said. “Part of the problem is we don’t have physicians sufficiently involved. They have a fuller insight about what is needed.” “Cue…
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FASB Approves Standard to Simplify Testing Goodwill for Impairment The Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) approved a revised accounting standard intended to simplify how an entity tests goodwill for impairment. Per the FASB: “The Board’s decision today comes as a direct result of what we heard from private companies, which had expressed concerns about the cost and complexity of performing the goodwill impairment test,” states FASB member Daryl Buck. “The amendments approved by the Board address those concerns and will simplify the process for public and nonpublic entities alike.” The amendments will allow an entity to first assess qualitative factors…
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Study: A Quarter of LPs Plan to Increase Allocations An overwhelming majority of investors who responded to a recent survey planned to maintain or increase their allocations to private equity, with high fees and a lack of transparency dissuading the remainder from committing more capital to the asset class. Clare Burrows reports at Private Equity International: Only 2 percent of the 411 investors and consultants surveyed by fund administrator SEI plan to decrease their allocation to private equity in the next 12 months, with 26 percent planning to increase their exposure. In the first of three reports based on the…
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Stumped on How to Figure Discounts? The IRS Can Help. The Engineering/Valuation Program DLOM Team at the IRS has posted a job aid on the IRS site. The 112-page guide reviews definitions of marketability and discusses factors that influence it. The aid illuminates the distinctions between minority and controlling interests. It offers sample initial information document requests (IDRs). A large section of the document reviews various methods of factoring DLOM. These include benchmark approaches (restricted stock studies, pre-IPO studies, cost of flotation, and Mandelbaum factors), securities-based approaches (LEAPs, the Longstaff Study, the Chaffee Study, Bid-Ask Spread Method), analytical approaches (Wruck;…
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Apple’s ‘bogus’ patents will ‘strangle’ Android: Google So reports Asher Moses this month in The Advertiser: Google’s chief legal officer has launched a blistering attack on competitors, including Apple, for attempting to stifle innovation by using “bogus patents” to target Google’s Android partners including Samsung. David Drummond, who is also Google’s senior vice-president, wrote in an explosive blog post that the patent wars were pushing up the prices of Android smartphones and tablets. This was part of a “hostile, organised campaign” being waged by Apple, Microsoft and others to “strangle” Android, which Google provides free of charge. His remarks come…
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Magic, Sex, and Outer Space Goodwill is the established reputation of a business regarded as a quantifiable asset. Or of a person who’s part of that business: That’s why you often hear discussions about how to best separate personal goodwill from enterprise goodwill. But what if your personal goodwill was regarded so highly, in a contract, that you’d need to work for the new company that was buying you out for six years? And if you left, you’d have to give all the money back? James Altucher reminisces: In 2002 I framed a $200 check from a company called thestreet.com.…
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Dueling Documentaries You’ve maybe read about the pro-trial lawyer documentary out recently from HBO called “Hot Coffee” in The Atlantic. (The title “Hot Coffee” refers to the famed McDonalds case of a few years back, when a woman was awarded some $3M+ by a jury for overly-hot coffee spilled on her by McDonalds.) Now there’s “Injustice,” which asks, “What do you have to do to earn a billion dollars in lawyer’s fees?” Steve Forbes calls it a “Must-See.” The State Bar of Michigan notes the arrival of both on its blog: Trial lawyers feeling the love from the HBO documentary “Hot Coffee” might want…
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In Silicon Valley, a Culture Clash Sullies a Romance Steven M. Davidoff reports on the New York Times DealBook blog: Private equity has broken venture capital’s heart, and V.C. is not taking it well. The romance ended when Silver Lake, the private equity firm, agreed to sell Skype to Microsoft. Silver Lake is estimated to be pocketing more than $4 billion from the sale. This would normally be a joyous event for Skype’s employees as they too share the wealth. But it is nothing of the sort. The venture capital community appears to be up in arms…
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Medical Group Management Association (MGMA) Survey Reports Top Challenges MGMA members were asked to identify top management challenges, and the results of the 2011 survey are in: See what MGMA members had to say about the results in the July MGMA Connexion. Compare this year’s results with previous years. Read the story behind the numbers and see how challenges are ranked by applicability.
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The 7 Biggest Financial Mistakes Businesses Make Running a business should earn you an honorary degree given all you will learn, writes Brian Hamilton, co-founder and CEO of Sageworks, over at Inc. We live and we learn. In the time it’s taken me to build two companies, I have learned and more importantly, lived, these mistakes. I hope these pieces of advice can help both aspiring and existing entrepreneurs succeed in starting and running their own businesses. Here are the CliffNotes, the mistakes you should hear now and avoid. 1. Hiring in advance of revenue. There is a common expression: “Don’t…
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IT Guru Turns Out to Be Security Hole Roger Kay reports at Forbes: Small businesses have become a choice target for hackers, but by far the most common — and devastating — attacks on small businesses are inside jobs. This is the story of one such assault. The target (we’ll call him Peter) trusted his IT guy (Joe, for our purposes) because Joe worked magic. Peter didn’t understand exactly what Joe was doing, but had to trust him anyway because Peter couldn’t perform those functions himself. Ironically, in his former life, Peter was CFO at a large oil company and…
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CPA Exam Launched at International Test Sites Michael Cohn at Accounting Today reports: The U.S. CPA Exam was successfully administered at four international test sites: Japan, Bahrain, Kuwait, Lebanon and the United Arab Emirates. The American Institute of CPAs, the National Association of State Boards of Accountancy and Prometric said Monday that candidates took exams at the four locations abroad on August 1, the first time in history that the CPA Exam has been administered outside the U.S. and its territories. During the remainder of August, 1,165 candidates are expected to sit for 2,065 examination sections. Future month-long testing windows…
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Wild Market Quiets the Buzz for I.P.O.’s Evelyn M. Russli and Michael J. De La Merced at New York Times’ Dealbook: As stocks swing violently, a chill is beginning to settle on the initial public offering market. A small number of companies have already retreated on their offering plans. WageWorks, an employee benefits provider, pushed its offering, originally scheduled for Friday, to next week and dropped its target price range by as much as 43 percent. Two real estate investment trusts, Orchid Island Capital and Eola Property Trust, have withdrawn their filings. And Old Mutual, a big South African insurance…
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Cut Down on Email, Increase Your Biz Dev So advise Bret Owens and Dan Markovitz at AccountingToday: Too many CPAs begin the day reading through their email inbox. No doubt, reputations depend on near instantaneous client service. But let’s face it—if the only value you’re providing for your client is rapid response, you’ll eventually be replaced by someone in Mumbai, Shenzhen or some other time zone who can respond even faster. Moreover, that level of service comes at a cost: CPAs become reactive rather than proactive. No matter how quickly they respond, they are always fighting fires, always behind the…
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S Corporation Rental Income Not Passive Except When It Is Peter J. Reilly reports at Forbes: Private Letter Ruling 201118011 A C corporation is a taxable entity. Distributions that it makes to its shareholders are also, generally, taxable to them. People who don’t want to pay tax twice on the same income will make an S election. The shareholders are taxed on whatever the earnings are regardless of distributions. Distributions of those earnings will generally not be taxable. It’s pretty easy if the corporation made the election effective day one of its existence. Former C corporations have other problems. If…
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Hey There, Bob Posen! Steven Zelin, aka “The Singing CPA,” and Edith Orenstein, Accounting WEB blogger for Financial Executives International (FEI), have teamed up to create a music video celebrating the third anniversary of the Security and Exchange Commission’s (SEC)Advisory Committee on Improvements to Financial Reporting chaired by Robert C. (Bob) Pozen, senior financial lecturer at Harvard University. AccountingWeb reports: Complexity in financial reporting continues to vex members of the accounting profession as we address issues including convergence from Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) to International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS), implementation of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act,…
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Buying an Established Business The Wall Street Journal’s “Running a Business” blog analyzes the benefits of buying vs. building: If you’re interested in entrepreneurship, but lack ideas or time to create a new business, buying an established company may be a wise alternative. You’ll inherit a working infrastructure complete with resources you’d otherwise have to secure on your own, such as equipment and employees. You’ll also ideally be taking over a known brand built on a positive reputation over many years’ time. Buying a business typically does require more capital upfront than if you were to build one anew. But…