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Accounting News Roundup: More Accountants, Better World; Sustainability Reporting; Media Empire Juggling | 11.13.15

Posted on by Caleb Newquist

Accounting Linked to Prosperity and Better Living Standards [AT]
The International Federation of Accountants commissioned a study by the Centre for Economics and Business Research that found: "regions of the world with a higher share of accountants in total employment have a higher per capita GDP." And if you think that's a little too industrial for your liking, the study also found that "accountants in total employment and the U.N. Human Development Index was found to be even stronger." That UNHDI measures things like life expectancy, years of schooling and income. I guess this means that accountants are doing their part to save the world.

Investors Want More From Sustainability Reporting, Says Former SEC Head [CFOJ]
Mary Schapiro, vice chair of Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB!), is pushing, you guessed it, better sustainability reporting.

“We know investors care about this information,” said Mary Schapiro, the former Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman in comments to a Bloomberg Sustainable Business summit in New York Thursday.

Yet she added investors are “highly dissatisfied with the information they are getting today” and “can’t really use it effectively for their allocation decisions.”

You may be thinking, "Investors do not care about this information," but the Government & Accountability Institute reported that 75% of the S&P 500 issued sustainability reports in 2015, up from 20% in 2011. Schapiro says that businesses want "to hold businesses accountable" on sustainability goals, which could mean that interesting reporting and auditing opportunities are on the horizon.

The Web of Deals That John Malone Weaves [DealBook]
Don't you hate it when your media empire is so large that you have to reshuffle the entity structure just to make sense of it? John Malone's Liberty Interactive is spinning off two units from its Liberty Ventures Group: CommerceHub and Liberty Expedia Holdings. Meanwhile, Liberty Media Corporation is reclassifying its common stock into three separate equities: Liberty Braves Group, Liberty Sirius Group and Liberty Media Group. The reason for the split is to:

“highlight each tracking stock group’s operations, and the financial performance of its attributed assets, provide greater investor choice, and enable targeted capital raising while maintaining an optimal capital structure for Liberty.”   

So I'm probably oversimplifying the "just to make sense of it" thing, but maybe not too much.

In other news:

  • Warren Buffett Has an Image Problem [WSJ]
  • Depressed PhD candidates. [Quartz]
  • Could We Get the Tax Code Down to Three Pages? [TaxVox]
  • Twins get in twin trouble. [TSG]
  • Cop pulls over Google self-driving car, finds no driver to ticket [CNN]

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With ‘Enron,’ Financial Misdeeds Hit Broadway [DealBook]
“Enron” opened on Tuesday at the Broadhurst Theatre and is receiving mixed reviews. Given the time and subject matter, brief and inadequate descriptions of the accounting techniques involved (e.g. champagne metaphor to explain mark-to-market) were necessary and some didn’t appreciate the patronization:

At the after-party for “Enron,” the most common complaint about the play was the incessant use of metaphors and monologues to explain financial topics. It took up a large amount of time in the show and some audience members felt like they were being “talked down to.”

“I know what mark-to-market accounting is,” said one audience member who did not wish to be identified but did not work in the financial industry. “I felt like they were bashing me over the head with their juvenile explanations.”

Regardless of the “one-dimensional view of this multifaceted accounting technique” and its “lacking of dramatic depth,” “Enron” also has raptors and mice in suits. That, along with choreography using light sabers has led some to call the show “visually stimulating.” If your subject matter includes accounting rules, putting them in an acid trip seems like a good approach.

Grant Thornton to close Madison office [Business Journal of Milwaukee]
Grant Thornton is closing its Madison, WI office, consolidating those operations in Milwaukee. The firm stated “its goal is to retain as many of the Madison office’s 61 employees as possible,” and that it is “committed to assisting all employees during this transition.”

This latest move follows the Grant Thornton office closure in Greensboro, NC that occurred earlier this year.

Credit Suisse Taps Mathers as New C.F.O. [DealBook]
David Mathers is currently the COO and Head of Finance for the investment banking unit at CS. He takes over for Renato Fassbind in October.

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