Professor Elam

SEC Still Cracking Down on non GAAP Reporting

Monday April 25, 2016

As previously reported the SEC continues to crack down on non GAAP reporting.

This has allowed many companies to spin losses into earnings.

Meet Susan Hough at PwC

Thursday April 21, 2016

PwC Fast Facts

Located in157 countries

758 Total Locations

77 US Offices

205,000+ Employees

$34 Billion in Gross Revenue

84% of the Fortune Global 500 are clients

The last time I sat down with Susan Hough in her office was Sept 16, 2013 and I described that as

time well spent! Back then Susan was the Managing Director of the San Antonio office for Resource Global Professionals (RGP).

Role forward to April 18, 2016 and I’m once again in her office but this time, she is a Client Relationship Executive for PwC. Yes, PwC is back in San Antonio.

After an absence from the San Antonio market since 1999, Price Waterhouse Coopers PwC decided to re-enter the San Antonio market. After such a long absence PwC reasoned they needed a proven accounting and financial marketing executive to get things going. And so Susan Hough was approached, and agreed to join PwC.

We sat down with her at the new office in Suite 920 in the Concord Plaza at US 281 and Jones Maltsberger across from the Quarry Shopping Center. The Grand Opening was held inAugust, 2015.

Susan shared that the PwC offices in Dallas and Houston employ about 2,000 individuals each. Austin has 200 and San Antonio’s goal is to triple it’s size in the next few years to around 75 employees. San Antonio is part of the ‘”Texas Strategy”. More firms and individuals continue to move to Texas from higher tax and regulatory environments like California and New York so the market is strong for both new hires and business.

Susan indicated that she spends time with clients who are interested in hearing what PwC has to offer. Clients are curious as to why PwC is back after closing the office in 1999 and they have responded well to having options from another Big 4 firm. Interestingly, the San Antonio office is the first time in PwC history that a new office has been opened (Susan in Texas or the USA it is USA?) without a major audit client.

PwC employees spend time “telling their story” which includes the fact that today’s PwC is not your grandfathers PwC. Over the recent past, PwC has been on a major acquisition mode and has acquired both Bearing Point and Booz and Company (former Booz Allen) along with other specialty consulting companies.   Today a large portion of the business comes from Advisory/Consulting work and not just your traditional audit and tax work of the past. .

Susan emphasized the new digital focus of the firm With over 3,000 team members globally, PwC Digital Services provides clients with a new kind of consulting to help them reimagine their businesses for the digital age.

In 2015 PwC was named one of the world’s largest digital agencies and the world’s largest mobile marketing agency by AdAge. PwC was also named a leader in Digital Transformation, Digital Strategy, Digital Operations, Digital Products/Services, and Customer and Brand Engagement consulting services by leading analyst firms.

In addition to the Digital focus, PwC is also focused on client’s needs in cyber-security. PwC’s Cybersecurity and Privacy practice is well suited for San Antonio and in fact, one room in the office suite is fully devoted to cyber-security.

As with other modern firms, the large partner corner office is a remnant of the past. Now PwC utilizes the ‘hoteling’ concept. Staffers reserve space in the office from an app on their phones for the times and days they need to come in. This applies to cubicles, open areas, and small but efficient offices.

The Big 4 Firms are doing all kinds of new things these days and PwC is no exception. Readers can check out PwC’s identified Mega Trends at this link. Mega trends is a futurist concept pioneered by John and Doris Naisbitt.

As a veteran of the San Antonio work place with experience at USAA andRGP, Susan is well acquainted with almost every company in the San Antonio market and is really enjoying telling the PwC story.

Our guess is most accounting firms in San Antonio will do more business in 2016 than they did in 2015 And expanded revenues will come from expanding business. No one will need to take business away from anyone else. And with Susan Hough as the Client Relationship Executive/Sales Leader, that will most likely be the case for the new PwC office as well.

Negative Rates Upend the World

Tuesday April  19, 2016

Read about a Dane who is being paid by his mortgage company. Yes he had a mortgage and the mortgage company was paying him !  HIs parents suggested framing the check to prove it happened.

This article examines the real problems of low to no yield rates and duration.   

Typically insurance companies need longer term bonds with yields to match their policy promises.

Here is a look at how German insurers are handling that question.

Swiss banks both gain and loss customers over low rates.

CPO

Monday April 18 2016

NO that is not Chief Petty Officer, did you know there is a designation of

 

Certified Professional Organizer?

Brazil's Lower House Vote to Impeach Rouseff

Monday April 18, 2016

BRAZIL LOWER HOUSE VOTES TO IMPEACH PRESIDENT

Brazil’s lower house of congress voted to impeach President Dilma Rousseff, report Paul Kiernan and Reed Johnson, although many of the president’s supporters are outraged that some of the lawmakers pushing hardest to impeach her have been caught up in a graft probe centered on state oil company Petróleo Brasileiro SA, or Petrobras. House Speaker Eduardo Cunha has been charged with pocketing millions in funds diverted from Petrobras.

It remains to be seen whether Ms. Rousseff’s likely successor, Vice President Michel Temer, will be able to tackle major changes that economists say Brazil needs, as several high-ranking members of his party are caught up in the Petrobras scandal. The political fight now moves to the Senate, which first must decide whether to accept the case. If Ms. Rousseff loses that ballot, she would be forced to step down for a maximum of 180 days while on trial. Mr. Temer would take over during that period. A two-thirds senate vote for impeachment would be required to permanently remove Ms. Rousseff from office. Mr. Temer then would serve out the remainder of her term.

Source WSJ Energy Report

Actually this is encouraging. Usually whoever is pocketing money in Central or South America slips out of office in tact.This may be one of the first times that a major scandal like Petrobas is exposed and the culprits are held responsible.

Mary O'Grady on the Impeachment Drama. 

Mary writes on Central and South America on Mondays in the WSJ. It is the best coverage of the area I know of in the least amount of space.

Energy in the Climate Change Cross Hairs

Friday April  15 2016

 

Oil Prices Rebound as Governments Target Big Oil

Zero Hedge provides a look at just how much oil is waiting to be off loaded.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-04-13/stunning-photos-huge-oil-supertanker-lines-forming-worlds-biggest-traffic-jam

This link is provided to emphasize the point we have been making in this space the last few months; new readers take note. The price of oil does not move on supply and demand. The price of oil moves on waves of social mood.   Social mood is patterned on a robust fractal demonstrated by the Elliott Wave principle.   That is high sounding technical talk better explained in my web log themarketperspective than via a general interest newspaper column.

But, our point is that oil bottomed along with the stock market on February 11. The news, then as now, was uniformly negative about bullish prospects for oil prices. New York analysts were eyeing $20. The storage tanks in Cushing, OK were full. Tankers were waiting offshore literally around the world to off load more oil than any buyer wanted. Worse shale producers with too much debt had no alternative but to produce more oil to make interest payments. Ditto for OPEC and other oil producers like Russia who had nothing else to sell. And so the outlook was uniformly bleak.

Amidst that chaos, we predicted a low and then an advance in price. And so oil has risen from just under $27 to near $44 just yesterday. Share prices of everything energy have also risen though are still quite depressed from the lofty levels of eighteen months back.

Energy and stock prices have fallen early this year and then risen in tandem. We are near the seasonal peak for stock prices at Tax Day. This bears watching. Stock prices have enjoyed a furious rally of 15% since February. But stock prices generally have not exceeded last year’s highs. That would be necessary for a real across the board break out.

Meanwhile, the climate change crowd is not giving up. Its latest target is big oil and the biggest of them all-Exxon Mobil XOM. The tactics remind me of the TET offensive created by a North Viet Nam General who had studied in the USA. He reasoned that if the North created such furious attacks on US positions in Viet Nam, the resulting publicity, whether the North was successful or not, would weaken US support for the war. That would eventually spread to Congress and a lack of funding for the War. And once TET launched in 1968, that is exactly what happened. Most Americans were not aware that the North lost the offensive, only that mass casualties were happening in what appeared to be an out of control situation.

Multiple legal salvos have been launched in what is obviously a coordinated campaign to discredit XOM. This has an antecedent. It is the same tactic used against big tobacco. The government eventually proved that big tobacco had withheld information that smoking was in fact injurious to one’s health. In the same way, the object here is to fish long enough to find some evidence of climate change cover-up. This is a brilliant tactic in that the prosecutors never have to prove the danger of climate change, merely that there was a cover-up.  The same tactic discredited Nixon during Watergate.

Unable to pass a carbon tax, the group now coordinates on Big Oil ( and you our readers) via the courts.   How else could it be that the Attorney General of the US Virgin Islands (now honestly did you know the Islands even had an Attorney General?) and New York State both subpoenaed the same company over the same issue? The conspiracy thickens. Kenny Bruno and Bill McKibben, founder of 350.org, led the fight to defeat the Keystone XL pipeline.   They are urging state attorney generals to establish in the public’s mind that Exxon is “a corrupt institution that has pushed humanity toward climate chaos and grave harm” in an explicit statement issued by the group.

I suggest that West Texas residents familiarize themselves with the 350.org website. The avowed purpose on the site is to “revoke the social license of the fossil fuel industry and keep carbon in the ground.” In other words put the entire oil industry out of business. There is of course no way existing wind and solar (now at a distinct price disadvantage to conventional oil) can provide the energy necessary to power America but hey, phrases like renewable energy sounds great!

The Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization Act RICO was created to stop money laundering and such by drug cartels and organized crime. Now Sharon Eubanks who led the tobacco litigation believes XOM can be pursued under RICO.

Readers take notice, your employment is in the cross hairs of the climate change lobby.

Contact Professor Elam at [email protected]

KIm Strassel on the Lack of CEO Courage

Friday April 15 2016

My favorite thirty minutes on tv is the WSJ Editorial Report that usually runs about 11 30 AM Saturday and 2 30 PM Sunday on Fox News.

The regulars who write opinion columns for the WSJ each week are on and present their views.

Today Kim Strassel wrote a column worth reading and discussing.
she notes that corporate America has rolled over rather than challenge the notion that they are the problem. If Corporate America is theproblem

how come everyone wants to come here rather than say Syria or Venezuela (hail socialism) or Brazil?

This is  a topic worth discussing.

Job Openning

Thursday April 14 2016

We are assisting a client with a search for a junior financial analyst. This is a large company, SEC registrant. They are open to someone with 1 – 2 years of experience or even someone graduating this semester.

Can you recommend any strong finance students or recent grads who would be interested in a permanent opportunity with a great company? If you can provide any names, contact information and why you’re recommending them, we can reach out to screen them directly.

Thank you,
Lori

Lori Darchicourt | Director of Talent Acquisition & Development | Aventine Hill Partners Inc.
: 13750 San Pedro Ave, Suite 370, San Antonio, TX 78232
: 210.745.4106 (Office) l 210.317.4669 (Cell) l 210.745.4199 (Fax)
: [email protected] | aventinehillinc.com
<image001.png>www.linkedin.com/in/loridarchicourt

Government and Non Profit Day

Thursday April 14, 2016

The Government & Non-Profit Day is next week!  We will be welcoming representatives from various non-profits organizations and state and federal government agencies seeking to recruit for full-time, part-time, internship and volunteer opportunities.  Get those resumes ready to meet with organizations such as:

 

City Year Inc.

HACU National Internship Program

Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts

Texas Department of Family and Protective Services

U.S. Border Patrol

U.S. Secret Service

USDA

AND MORE!

 

For a full listing of attending recruiters click here.

 

 

 

We will also be welcoming the SHRM @ A&M-SA student chapter as they continue their 4^th annual Fill the Cart campaign.  They will be holding an information table at the event if anyone is interested in contributing.  Physical food items are appreciated but please no glass items.  The goal is to reach 30,000 pounds of food by April 30^th.  Included below is additional information in case you would like to learn more about this student led initiative.  You can also check out the drive webpage at www.shrmfooddrive.com (adobe flash required). 

 

 

 

 

Texas A&M University Office of Career Services 

Annette R. Wilson 
Director of Career Services 
[email protected] 
(210) 784-1342 
Main Campus, CAB, Suite 211

Clarissa E. Tejeda
Career Advisor 
[email protected] 
(210) 784-1339
Main Campus, CAB, Suite 211
Brooks City-Base Campus, Room 179

Heather Schuster
Career Advisor
[email protected]
(210) 784-1406
Main Campus, CAB, Suite 211

Blueprinting the Revised CPA Exam

Wed April 13, 2016

The revised CPA Exam features a new content specification outline CSO.

This will allow the candidate to know better what to expect on the exam.

When I took the exam in 1975 it was paper and pencil. It was divided between multiple choice and hand written (and graded) answers.

It required one to write out answers  using good grammar and exhibit an understanding of accounting terminology.

Multiple choice exams do not let one do that. By infusing more content type problems it seems to me that the exam is beginning to look more like it did four decades ago.

Read this article to stay up on the latest developments in the exam.