The School of Accounting and Finance (SAF) attracts talent…not just stellar, high achieving students to our programs, but internationally reputed professors. The SAF welcomed Alec Cram (PhD Queen’s), Elizabeth Demers (PhD Stanford), and Neal Stoughton (PhD Stanford) this past September into our faculty compliment. Alec, Liz, and Neal joins a community of boundary-pushing thinkers who continually challenge the status quo to evolve and transform the accounting and finance professions.
Students Defend Stock Choices at Annual Investment Research Challenge
On July 19th, 64 SAF students defended their buy, sell, or hold recommendation on one of four assigned stocks, while investing in experiential learning opportunities at the seventh annual Investment Research Challenge (IRC). The stock assigned were small cap publicly traded stocks (iRobot Corp, Sprouts Farmers Market, AMN Healthcare Services, and RH) with limited analyst following.
On the evening of Wednesday, June 12th, 2019, I had the pleasure of attending the School of Accounting and Finance’s (SAF) convocation ceremony, celebrating the graduation of 250 Accounting and Financial Management (AFM) students, 23 Computing and Financial Management (CFM) students, 15 Master of Taxation students, and 2 PhD of Accounting students. This marks the second year in a row where SAF had its own dedicated convocation ceremony, and the first including CFM students, who graduate with the Math faculty on alternating years.
Uber’s data breach, Facebook’s Cambridge Analytica leak, and Amazon Alexa’s spying scandal — these are just some of the crises from the past year that illustrate how important ethical decision-making remains as we fall headlong into the digital revolution. The uproar that has engulfed these industry giants are a testament to the foresight of the Centre for Accounting Ethics’ 2019 Symposium, “The Impact of Technology on Ethics, Professionalism Judgment in Accounting." This is especially true, as planning for the event began in 2017. Symposium organizers Linda Robinson and Krista Fiolleau tell us what it takes to make Accounting Ethics smarter in an age of smart technology.
Related party transactions (hereafter RPTs) involve a transfer of resources, services, or obligations between a reporting entity and a related party (SFAS 57; IAS 24). Although not all RPTs are “bad," prior research documents that some RPTs reflect insider opportunism and are harmful to shareholders.
Policy makers and regulators generally believe firms should enlist directors with more expertise. For example, the U.S.
When a firm suffers from a credit downgrade, will it be possible for the firm to record a large unrealized gain in its income? The answer is yes under the accounting standard SFAS No. 159 of the U.S. GAAP.
In a recent study published in The Accounting Review, Assistant Professor Kaishu Wu, School of Accounting and Finance and his colleagues David Guenther and Ryan Wilson (both at the University of Oregon) examine whether high levels of corporate income tax avoidance are achieved with additional risk-taking. In other words, do firms first exhaust relatively “safe” tax planning strategies before turning to “risky” strategies, as they pursue more tax savings?
