Edward Nusbaum

Edward Nusbaum, chief executive of Grant Thornton LLP since 2001, oversaw another year of strong revenue growth for the firm in 2005.

Under Nusbaum, the firm has worked to raise its profile on Capitol Hill, calling for increased choices for public companies, enhanced business reporting and defined rules on providing tax services to public audit clients. Nusbaum has also made his voice heard as a member of the Financial Accounting Standards Board's advisory council.

The seventh-largest firm in the country, Grant Thornton reported that firm revenues climbed 25 percent for the calendar year ending Dec. 31, to $795 million. Revenues for the firm have nearly doubled over the last three years (from $400 million in 2002), employee ranks have increased by more than 50 percent, to 4,781, and the number of partners has also grown 36 percent, to 425.

In an interview with WebCPA, Nusbaum talked about what he believes to be the secret behind his firm's success, tackling the recruiting game, international convergence, his thoughts on private GAAP and what the takeaways should be from the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board inspection process.

It was another year of growth for the firm. Do you think that's a function of Sarbanes-Oxley, marketing or something else?

I think it's those things, but also a recognition of the need for more accounting firms to step up to the plate, along with the concentration of the accounting profession. ... We have a real commitment to bring in people and encourage a culture that cares about their career aspirations and their career development and their success as individuals. What I've heard back from clients pretty consistently is that our people are enjoying what they're doing. They're happy about the profession, they're happy about the firm, they're excited to be out with the clients. The clients perceive that. Happy people make happy clients. It sounds a little silly, but it's true. ... The people issue is something you can't dismiss.

What's the key to retaining staff?

Work-life balance combined with a culture that talks about our guiding principles -- respect, integrity, professionalism, sense of leadership. Everybody's got guiding principles on a sheet of paper. It's how you implement them. ... We've been very outspoken about embracing changes to the profession. We spoke out before Sarbanes-Oxley publicly. And we've continued to speak out on issues, whether it's stock option expensing, 404 and internal control documentation. ... We're the first firm to say we're not going to do internal document controls for publicly traded audit clients. Some firms followed us on that, and some firms stayed silent.

When do you start recruiting college students?

Sophomore year. Right when they say they're going to be an accounting major. That's earlier than it used to be. ... You've got to hit them at the sophomore level. Last month I spoke at Columbia University, Northern Illinois University, University of Texas -- we just go around the country, really get out there and speak to them at different levels and tell them about different programs we have to get students really interested in the firm and in the profession and what they want to do within the accounting field.

Do you think the scandals are responsible for the resurgence of interest in young people getting into the profession?

My own view may be a little more skeptical, or maybe just realistic. There's an excitement to the accounting profession, and there's an exposure of the profession that wasn't there before, but I also think a big part of it is that there's plenty of jobs. ... The marketing now is not just corporate, it's on the college campuses and getting out and having substantive conversations with professors so they feel connected to our firm. When I'm out talking to the college campuses, I'm not just talking about Grant Thornton. I'm talking about Sarbanes-Oxley, or stock option expensing, or pension accounting or lease accounting.

Do you feel more competition coming from regional firms?

The concentration in the accounting profession is healthy for our business environment. We think it's good that more firms have stepped up. ... I think all the firms have had more opportunities to get larger and larger clients, and that filters down to the smaller firms as well. What we have said is, every company should look at the right accounting firm for the different kinds of assignments they have.

The right accounting firm might be Clifton Gunderson in some cases. Crowe Chizek in another. Grant Thornton in a third case. Or PricewaterhouseCoopers in another case. In some cases, we'll all be competing against each other; in other cases, different firms will have better resources. I don't think it's a level playing field in the sense somebody's going to say, "A local New York firm can do the same thing Grant Thornton can." Of course not. But for certain clients, they may be the right answer. And that's an increasing number of clients and I think the marketplace has recognized that. I think that's healthy and good for the environment.

Do you agree with people who say we're in a golden age of accounting right now?

I don't know if that's the right term or not. ... I think there was a period of time in the 1990s where people dismissed accountants and said, "Who cares?" The accounting person picked up on that, and began doing things that weren't appropriate, cutting corners, reducing guidelines, and we saw the impact of that. People got sloppy with their accounting, the auditors and the audit committees didn't care as much. That trend has more than reversed. ...

There are still going to be some frauds, there are still going to be some significant errors, but it's like a police officer trying to stop every crime. ... I don't know if the pendulum's going to swing back in these next few years. There's talk about reducing the intentions of Sarbanes-Oxley, this push by small companies and lobbyists to get rid of 404 -- and we're talking about companies with revenues of $20 million, which isn't so small -- that is going in the other direction and decreasing the quality of audits. There's no doubt if the auditor tests internal controls at the level required by Sarbanes-Oxley, the auditor does more work, but does a better audit. And the company does a better job with the controls.What developments do you see coming in the next five years?The two big trends I see are convergence with internal standards. International Reporting Standards have been taking on more and more importance in Europe and through the rest of the world. That trend will continue in the United States in the development of new standards. I'm on the FASB's advisory council, I think that the FASB wants to work closer and closer with internal standards-setters, and we'll see more and more convergence on new standards. ... I think there are problems with market value accounting, but I do think we'll see a growing trend towards more market accounting.

I think one of the hottest issues over the next few years will be lease accounting. ... Lease accounting is so far away from the economics that it's not even funny. I see it as the CEO of our firm. We sign a lease and I get this report on the economics of the transaction and the accounting for the transaction and never the two shall meet. And I don't know that the accounting will ever completely follow the economics, but it's got to get a little bit closer.What's your prognosis for private GAAP?Your guess is as good as mine. I do not have a crystal ball on that. We're generally not in favor of it. We think there are some disclosure areas that should be addressed differently for private companies versus public companies, because if the readers of private company financials need to have access to all kinds of more financial information, they can call the owner, the CFO and get information. For public companies, there are all kinds of restrictions. ... We just don't think it's good to have two sets of GAAP. It's too confusing, and the trend between companies going public, going private, is there.

You have some very large private companies out there; which side of GAAP are they going to use? Or what about private companies carrying public debt? Or companies that are held by private equity groups? Or private companies that get bought by public companies? To me, it's a quagmire. Now, that's probably not a popular answer with our small and midsized clients, but we think it's the right answer and we're pretty emphatic on it. The problem really runs in the way the profession has emerged in public versus private and the bifurcation of the whole profession and the regulators.

To us, the answer is to change GAAP. Fix that with the FASB. I'd rather see us focus our attention on things like enhanced business reporting.

The other thing I'll say on that is that in the rest of the world, there are efforts to come up with some different standards, but private companies, many of them are international in scope. There are $25 million companies that have operations in different countries. We need the same standards, ultimately, on a global basis. Accounting needs to be accounting. It's very hard to sit and explain to somebody outside of the profession why the accounting is different in one country versus another.Is there any news to report on the Refco lawsuit?From the legal standpoint, it's in the very early stages. We don't anticipate any major problems, although I'm sure it'll cost us a lot of money in legal fees, as these cases always do.Is there anything you would have done differently?Always, but there's no indications of anything else we could have done, even with hindsight being 20-20... . We have done a pretty thorough investigation of the audit, and as far as we can tell we did all the right auditing procedures, all the right standards, a lot of work. ... I think as a profession, there's more and more we can do in the area of auditing for fraud. It does point out that no matter how much auditing you do, even if you do all the right things, if there's collusion at the top, some frauds can still be pulled off. It's very, very frustrating for the profession and for all the firms.What's Grant Thornton doing in response to the first round of PCAOB inspections?One of the things we've spoken out about publicly is that firms should share the results and the tools and the processing of procedures of what they do on internal controls. ... [That's the way] to find some best practices.

If you study all the [PCAOB] reports, they're all pretty similar. Some had more comments than others, but it's not really the quantity as much as the nature of the comments. But without digging into it, it's hard to reach any conclusions by reading what's on the [PCAOB's] Web site -- other than that all the firms can improve their auditing. ... I think you can't read too much into it, other than that the PCAOB did a very thorough review and really beat up the firms, appropriately so. They did their job. They dug into these engagements and forced all of the firms to do more work and make changes. And we're working on making those changes. ...

One of the things we said in our response to the PCAOB is that the board should use what they learned to help all the firms adopt best practices. I think the PCAOB is really in a unique position. They've seen the underbellies of every firm. The good, the bad, and the ugly. [If another firm] is doing something better than Grant Thornton, then we want to hear about it.

For reprint and licensing requests for this article, click here.
MORE FROM ACCOUNTING TODAY