ANTHONY H. CATANACH JR. is an associate professor in the School of Business at Villanova University, as well as the Cary M. Maguire Fellow at the American College Center for Ethics in Financial Services. His professional experience includes five years as an audit manager with KPMG and six years in the financial services industry. Dr. Catanach has received numerous awards for his publication, teaching, and curriculum innovation efforts. He has authored numerous articles on a variety of accounting, finance, and management issues, as well as several business education texts..
The business enterprise j2 Global Communications (JCOM) in its first quarter 2011 filing made an accounting change and called it a change in estimate. As several observers have noted, what the Company called a change in estimate is really an accounting error. What we would like to know is when will the SEC take JCOM’s [...]
The Equipment Leasing & Financing (ELF) Foundation issued a study on leases in December. We assume these elves were hoping Santa would present them a gift of no amendments to lessee accounting. After all, why report economic reality if you don’t have to?
Visa recently set aside some cash to fund future litigation payouts. This is an interesting announcement because it may portend the booking of some litigation losses not already recognized by the firm.
In previous essays we have discussed the context in which Enron found itself during the 1990s, an environment friendly to managers who chose aggressive accounting maneuvers; we have described the crimes themselves; we have looked at the gargantuan transformation of the auditing profession; and we have examined what Arthur Andersen did not do in its [...]
Nov 302011
For the past decade, securities analyst Mike Mayo has engaged in a relentless and passionate crusade against Citigroup’s accounting practices. A recurring rant has been his concerns over the big bank’s valuation of its deferred tax assets (DTAs). He has argued relentlessly that Citigroup simply cannot generate sufficient taxable income to support the $52.1 billion [...]
J. EDWARD KETZ is an associate professor of accounting in the Smeal College of Business at Pennsylvania State University. He has a bachelor’s degree in political science, a master’s degree in accountancy, and a Ph.D., all from Virginia Tech. Professor Ketz has been a member of the Penn State faculty since 1981. He also has taught at the University of Connecticut and the University of Maryland. Professor Ketz has authored and edited 17 books including Hidden Financial Risk (Wiley, 2003) which examines the corporate culture and the institutional setting that engendered recent accounting scandals. Dr. Ketz has been cited in the popular and business press, including The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Business Week, and USA Today. He also has appeared as an accounting commentator on CNN, National Public Radio, and Bloomberg Radio.