Accounting education

I just came across a rather interesting Web site that I thought I would share with you. It’s called ValueForum.com. It’s an online investment forum geared toward allowing the free-flow of information among investors. The site provides a discussion forum where members can immediately gain access to more than 1,500 other members to talk about individual stocks, mutual funds, market sectors (i.e. energy), economic conditions (i.e. housing market), and any number of other topics that affect the everyday investor. The company says that the members on this site are all screened rigorously to ensure that no one is there to “product push” or gain anything besides knowledge. These members, the company notes, range from experienced individual investors to financial professionals and even those new to investment. The majority of the forum members are between the ages of 55 & 65 while over 20 percent are 65+…retirees, or many who are of retirement age but are still employed. A few of the offerings that ValueForum.com brings to the table are an active discussion forum, where with over 125 discussion topics, members can post a discussion question/topic to create a forum of open and free-flowing discussion. These discussions are listed in chronological order and by topic. There is also what is called shared portfolios whereby users can view the holdings of other ValueForum.com users, or share their own portfolios with the group. Members can also view the latest news on the stocks within each of the shared portfolios. Moreover, they can choose to contribute to the “Community Portfolio Project,” a portfolio built solely on the picks of members who wish to share their portfolios with others. Then too, there is a stock-picking contest where members participate in quarterly or year-long contests in which they choose a handful of stocks and a desired weight. Prizes are then given at the end of each contest period to the members with the highest performing portfolios. And finally, there are group polls by which members can create a poll question to their peers, answer questions posted by other members, and view results of all poll questions posted. ValueForum was formed in 2003 by Adam Menzel, Ben Nobel, and Daniel Pedisich. They created the site with the belief that the power of collaboration leads to better investment decisions. They say that there have always been investment clubs where people physically get together in a room every week, but now there is a way to bring people together from all over the country, and the world, to one spot in order to share their ideas. The benefit, they note, is a collaboration of cultural diversity, different work experiences, and varying investment experiences. The power of “group thinking” benefits those investors managing their own portfolio as well as those managing accounts for clients, says the company. Members immediately gain access to a wealth of knowledge about different industries to help them in their due diligence and analysis on investments, sectors, and the like. Now, in the interests of fair disclosure, I am not advocating or “pushing” this in any way. I simply am imparting information about such a site and you can take it from there.

The KPMG Foundation has granted $410,000 in scholarships to 41 minority doctoral scholarships for the 2008-2009 academic year as part of its effort to increase the number of minority students and professors in business schools.

The Schonbraun McCann Group LLP has changed its name to Cornerstone Accounting Group LLP and announced some management changes.

A new Web site is providing sample questions for the CPA Exam for free.

Job satisfaction among financial planners remains high, with 96 percent of financial planners saying they are "satisfied" or "very satisfied" with their career choice, according to an annual survey.

CPA Wealth Provider's second ranking of firms by AUM has now been published and it’s bigger and better than ever. As you know, AUM is a term originally employed by financial services companies in the mutual fund and money management or investment management business to gauge how much money they were managing. Many financial services companies used this as both a measure of success and comparison against their competitors; in lieu of revenue, they had total assets under management. For readers of the publication, last October it presented the first-ever ranking of such firms by AUM. The initial response was staggering. It had 89 responses so it tried again and now the responses are no longer staggering—they are stupendous! CPA Wealth Provider more than doubled last year’s count and reached the 200 mark which included a batch of firms who unfortunately couldn’t get their survey forms completed in time for this closing. Because of this response, the publication decided to break the numbers down into sections and to specifically indicate each section. There are now 18 firms in the Billion Dollar Club (termed Wealth Magnet Elite), 87 in the $100+ Billion Club (termed Wealth Magnet Select), and another 37 in the $50+ Million Club plus a whole host of Rising Stars and Ones to Watch. But most importantly of all, take a look at the firms on the charts. They practically mirror the entire CPA/financial planning industry—from geographic location to size to AUM numbers to affiliations to recommended financial planning products. What does this show? Exactly what we felt all along—the financial planning industry is a tiger by the tail. We see this at various conferences and trade shows where copies of this publication literally fly off the racks. We are also getting tons of communiqués from readers as to how well they like the magazine and leading experts in the field constantly inquire about contributing articles. You can see this by the varied mix of authors and subjects. I firmly believe that CPA Wealth Provider remains the leading national publication for CPAs involved in financial planning.

Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance has introduced SignatureCare 500, a long-term care insurance product that lets consumers customize a policy to meet their needs.

Outsourced accounting company Corefino has snagged $13.6 million in a first round of funding led by Opus Capital Ventures and Bay Partners.

In preparation for the eventual transition to International Financial Reporting Standards, Big Four firm PricewaterhouseCoopers has launched a suite of educational products and services to help accounting students learn IFRS fundamentals.

Accounting Today is issuing a call for nominations for its annual Top 100 Most Influential People in Accounting list.

Looking for strong leads to grow your financial planning practice? Try scouring your tax clients.It may seem obvious, but internal marketing within your tax base is the best way to beef up your wealth management clientele, and is often a welcome service offering that can lead to referrals.

TOO MANY RAID NEST EGGSRoughly one quarter of adults who are actively planning for their retirement have prematurely withdrawn from their retirement investment products, according to a Wall Street Journal Online/Harris Interactive Personal Finance Poll that surveyed those in the 45-54 age bracket. According to the survey, the most common reasons for such premature withdrawals are a family member losing a job and the cost of a downpayment on a home. However, nearly one third of those who withdrew funds cannot pay them back, and 45 percent either cannot pay back the funds or have not begun to do so.

Statement of Financial Accounting Standards No. 141 (R), Business Combinations, issued by the Financial Accounting Standards Board, promises to change how companies approach planning and reporting around mergers, acquisitions and ownership changes.The statement, effective for companies with fiscal years beginning after Dec. 15, 2008, covers how an acquirer should recognize and measure the identifiable assets acquired, liabilities assumed, and any noncontrolling interest in the acquiree; recognize and measure the goodwill acquired in the business combination or a gain from a bargain purchase; and determine what information to disclose to statement users.

Profitability and being client-focused go hand in hand. Intellectually, all accountants believe this, but they have a hard time identifying specific actions they can take to maximize both profitability and client service. Over the years, I’ve observed specific client-focused activities that correlate to firm profitability.Here are 12 specific things you can do:

Accounting firm Weaver and Tidwell has introduced a financial services niche practice aimed at investment companies, including hedge funds and private equity firms.

Never before has the issue of executive compensation garnered as much of the public’s interest as it has in recent years, due in large part to several highly publicized corporate scandals.The backlash from incidents involving top executives at global organizations, and recent changes in Securities and Exchange Commission proxy and accounting rules, have prompted interesting new trends related to how executives and board members within large public companies are being compensated and to what degree.

The seven deadly sins of career management were delineated by Kathleen Grace, founder of Grace Consulting Services, a professional services firm specializing in executive assessment, executive coaching and strategic succession planning, at the recent Forum for Women in Accounting, presented by The Advisory Board and Crosley + Company.

Deloitte plans to invest approximately $300 million to create a learning and leadership development center in Westlake, Texas.

The American Institute of CPAs plans to offer training in International Financial Reporting Standards and the Extensible Business Reporting Language.

One of legendary basketball coach John Wooden’s basic tenets of success was an axiom he quoted almost daily to his players, or for that matter, anyone who wanted to listen and learn.