Focus on Successon Planning Focus on Succession Planning
www.lexisnexis.ca Vol. 28, No. 6 Mid-May 2012
This Issue:

Want to learn more about this issue?
Selected Focus

Ontario hurdles critical to hopes of national unity

Many expect the fate of talks in Ontario to play a huge role in efforts to create a unified accounting profession across Canada, and some observers fear the differences between the Certified General Accountants of Ontario and Certified Management Accountants of Ontario could prove insurmountable.

Al Rosen, principal of Rosen & Associates, an investigative accounting firm in Toronto, believes the CGA/CMA Ontario announcement to postpone June membership votes on merging, with the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Ontario following suit, reflects a realization that the three bodies have vast differences that will be difficult, if not impossible to bridge.

"I think there are some fundamental reasons why they should not be brought together," said Rosen, who is a member of all three major accounting bodies in Ontario. "Canada has a different setup with respect to accounting organizations [including] the content of the courses and types of jobs people have.

‘I knew I was going to die,’ Jean recalls

 

Certain she was about to die, Michaëlle Jean hunkered with her National Film Board collaborator in a small Haitian town as government forces hurled rockets at their position.

It was 1987, during the first democratic elections in her native land following the ouster of Jean-Claude ‘Baby Doc’ Duvalier. He had inherited the mantle of president for life from his ruthless father, Francois ‘Papa Doc’ Duvalier.

"I knew I was going to die and I was at peace," the former governor general told attendees in a keynote address at the CMA Ontario Professional Development Institutes’ Taking Charge: Women Leaders in Business symposium in Toronto.

She’s alive today, she said, because the local men, women and children risked their lives to fight back against the troops.
Others wait at altar for U.S. to show

Often a trendsetter, the U.S. is instead playing the opposite role, and the patience of the global accounting community is starting to wear thin as the States continues to ponder International Financial Reporting Standards.

"The world is waiting, waiting, waiting" on the U.S. to make up its mind on whether to adopt international financial reporting standards, said Sir David Tweedie, the immediate past chair of the International Accounting Standards Board, at a recent invitation-only event in New York City.

"And, should it say no, the world will move on without it — and there is a danger in that," he added. "The danger is that [the decision] is delayed, then the [U.S.] election comes along and it could be another year before this issue is addressed … Meanwhile, we could end up with regional variations and it could take another 10 years to put it all together again."
Buffing the image of private equity

The private equity field is an important component of the economy but needs to do a better job of explaining its role and value, the co-founder of one of the world’s largest private equity firms told a Toronto symposium recently.

In a keynote speech to the Private Equity Symposium, David M. Rubenstein, managing director of the Carlyle Group, said otherwise private equity players will simply be written off as heartless job-killers and find their industry under government scrutiny and increased regulation.

It’s important for the sector to step up and sell its own story before governments step in and introduce rules and regulations which could hamper them.

"It’s a different world today," he said. "And the recession is not over — it may be technically but we’re not back to where we should be."
Subscribe Now!
Copyright 2006 LexisNexis Canada Inc. All rights reserved. | Legal Disclaimer | Privacy Policy | Site Feedback