CPA The first is CPA. Every accountant thinks they know what this stands for. Certified Public Accountant in the USA they will say. But that is not always true. To confuse us, five countries have conspired together to use CPA to confuse us: CPA Hongkong Certified Public Accountant CPA India Certified Public…
I have been wondering if I can have some fun with the mission statement of the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB). And surprise, I have found things to write about. There are two exessive sentences in the mission statement. First “Our work serves the public interest by fostering trust, growth and long-term financial stability in…
I was amused by this secondary heading in a recent article in the Wall Street Journal It reads: “Finance chiefs say they have had to tweak their forecasts …” (see Note below) I remember revising my forecasts as a CFO, but never tweaking them, nor twisting them, jerking them or pinching them. And perhaps in…
One of my stories about a CFO who was not a qualified accountant, could be made into a case study about internal controls and priority setting. It happened when we had four separate unconnected IT systems to run the company: manufacturing, inventory management, sales and accounting, but what was important was there were insufficient, even…
So CFO does not stand for Chief Financial Officer but chief fiddling officer because they ‘manage’ earnings in the financial statements. I did not invent this title. I saw it by chance searching for accounting articles in The Economist [1] and being an accountant myself, I thought I would muse about it. The subject matter…
I have discovered the most boring book in the world and it’s a bestseller. I forced myself to read parts of it recently. It is expensive: 120 Euros and profitable for the publisher. It has 607 pages. Its style is perfectly adapted to make one fall asleep after reading a couple of paragraphs. But even…
Accountants adore uncertainty so much they have invented and defined at least three different official versions of it. I found the first one in the Conceptual Framework for Financial Reporting issued by the International Accounting Standards Board called measurement uncertainty. But there are two others. Measurement uncertainty arises when, to use their pompous words, a…
Some US companies incorporated in Delaware, classify Delaware as a material risk. Company by-laws combined with Delaware law make life difficult for shareholders and potential shareholders. They can prevent changes to members of the board, prevent or delay takeovers and limit certain forms of lawsuits. Now these companies do not mention that the reason they…
IAS 315 [1] introduces the ‘concept of the spectrum of inherent risk’. I wondered what this rather noble, pompous concept could mean. I first thought that it related to the wide range of risks used in field of risk management. But no, auditors use this concept only in relation to possible misstatements in financial statements….
Most people believe that companies that pay dividends revel in financial health. Why then put fear into the hearts of shareholders with risk statements such as this: “There can be no guarantee that we will pay dividends or repurchase stock.” Every normal shareholder knows that the board of directors decides on the payment of dividends…