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Vol. 26, No. 10

September 2010

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IFRS 1

TBL Top 30

Forensic Accounting & Fraud

Education for Accountants

Helping athletes ‘get on with the rest of their lives’

Grant Skinner is not your grandfather’s accountant. Sure, the Winnipeg-based president of Wellington West Pro Ice can tell his clients the ins and outs of a tax return but they’re not just people in his neighbourhood — they’re among the best-known athletes in the world.

Skinner’s company offers “personal chief financial officer” services to more than 30 stars in the National Hockey League. That encompasses every financial aspect of a player’s life, whether they’re buying and selling homes after a trade to another team, needing a prenuptial agreement before getting married or helping sell the family farm in Alberta. Skinner also prepares quarterly statements of their assets, identifies appropriate insurance coverage, applies for green cards and monitors monthly cash flows.

Skinner, 53, says the work is vastly different from that of an agent, whose primary task is to negotiate contracts with the players’ teams. That relationship essentially ends once a player hangs up his skates, the exact same time as their partnership with Skinner ramps up.

New powers erode rights, warns Rosen

Inspectors for two Ontario accounting governing bodies now have the power to enter premises of members under investigation without a warrant. And that has sparked a heated warning from outspoken accounting industry critic Al Rosen that rights are being trampled, followed by an equally assertive response from the other side dismissing such criticism.

The controversial investigative mandates have been provided to both the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Ontario and Certified Management Accountants of Ontario under the recently passed Bill 158 – Accounting Professions Act, 2010.

Identical sections in the updated Chartered Accountants Act, 2010 and Certified Management Accountants Act, 2010, each state: “In conducting an investigation under this act, an investigator may, at any reasonable time, enter and inspect the business premises of the individual or firm under investigation, other than any part of the premises used as a dwelling, without the consent of the owner or occupier and without a warrant.”

CGAs want movement on movement

Although the Certified General Accountants of Ontario can now grant public accounting licences — having gained that status from Ontario’s Public Accountants Council — CGAs from elsewhere in Canada who move to Ontario won’t automatically be accorded the same public practice rights.

CGA Ontario, with assistance from CGA-Canada, has argued for more than a decade that under Canada’s Agreement on Internal Trade (AIT), members who move from other provinces and territories where public practice rights exist should also qualify in Ontario.

“Our classic example is that a CGA in B.C. who is auditing public companies can’t come to Ontario and automatically do that work without meeting additional requirements. That’s what this is all about,” says Doug Brooks, the Toronto-based chief executive officer of CGA Ontario.

Canadian opportunity seen in U.S. bill

It could be years until the full impact of the new financial reform bill in the U.S. is felt around the world but the regulatory-heavy reality has some observers predicting a bright future for Canada and its Big Six banks.

The U.S. Senate gave its approval last month to a massive 2,300-page bill, setting the stage for the biggest overhaul to the country’s financial system since the Great Depression. The new law gives extensive powers to regulators, who will write hundreds of new rules over the next couple of years in an attempt to create a foolproof — or as foolproof as possible — sector and put in place safety measures to ensure the recession of 2008-09 doesn’t repeat itself.

Some of the highlights include giving regulators the power to seize sinking financial institutions and force them to sell holdings that threaten the overall system; increasing capital requirements for banks while curtailing some forms of trading; and creating a new nine-member council which will monitor threats and whose goal is to prevent the events, including the failure of some of America’s biggest institutions, that followed September 2008 from happening again.