|
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
||||
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
||||||
|
|
|
2002 Articles Accountants on Accounting |
Accountants on Accounting By Susan Percy Representatives from Atlanta-based accounting firms assembled this fall, at Georgia Trend's invitation, to discuss changes and challenges facing their profession. Participants included representatives from eights accounting firms of varying sizes in addition to the managing partner of the Atlanta office of one of the Big Four accounting firms. The Georgia Trend's article, Accountants on Accounting indicated that all attendees have been shaken by the Enron scandal and the subsequent demise of Arthur Andersen. Most felt that the reputation of the entire industry had been tarnished by the actions of a small minority. The article goes on to report that on everyone's mind were the likely effects of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, which requires that CEOs and CFOs personally certify the accuracy of the reports their companies file with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The Act currently applies to public companies only, but participants discussed its ramifications for private companies, as well. Young : Congress recently passed the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002. Most of the provisions are specific to auditors of public companies. What effect do you think this law will have? Deeter : I think we see this as really good news for firms like ours. We see the sense of awareness and concern about the splitting of services – the consulting, income tax, auditing. I think that's going to be an issue for a lot of firms, even auditing and income tax services. We have opportunities of working with larger companies as they start splitting services. Young : Would you go a little more into the splitting up services? Deeter : Our practice focuses on privately held companies. Not much has changed yet. We, as always, get representation letters. There's a little bit of a gut-check. Often, the CEO will sign income tax returns under penalties of perjury. So that's often a gut-check, because we reconcile the tax returns with the accounting financial statements. But it does seem, in general, that even (with) our owner-operator clients, there's a ….. little bit higher awareness that they're publishing accurate financial statements. My sense is that all of the financial statements out there are a tad more conservative than they were a year ago. So that has a ripple effect through the financial markets. Wolf: I'm still struggling with the fact that Andersen is gone. All of our lives most of us have looked up to them as king of the hill. And, effectively, the federal government just decided to execute them on spot. I really think the press needs to examine how this happened. Obviously there were some leadership issues and value system issues. But there were 28,000 jobs that were just destroyed. I hope the press will continue to examine the effect of this reaction that we had, Sarbanes and everything that went along with it. Frankly, the “perp walk” have been kind of good, because they got the CEOs attention. Deeter: Take out some of the early headlines on Enron and WorldCom, I think the press has been reasonably on balance. Miller : I think there's tremendous opportunity for all of us to work together. I see the future as establishing relationships with each other. Deeter : When we get back to our offices, our red buttons will be on, our voice mail will be on, and there'll be clients looking for problem-solvers. And I don't know that a year from now that changes. |
|
|
|
||||||||||
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |