News

Facing an unprecedented global crisis, it’s natural to turn to taxes for comfort. As strange or unwanted a claim as this seems, our tax system reflects our societal wants and needs, and the behaviours we wish to encourage or discourage.

On February 20, 2020, the School of Accounting and Finance (SAF) faculty, staff, alumni, and members of CPA Ontario gathered in downtown Toronto to celebrate the successes of 2019 SAF graduates in their Common Final Examinations (CFE) to become a Chartered Professional Accountant (CPA).

We investigate how board expertise affects chief executive officer (CEO) incentives and firm value. The CEO engages in a sequence of tasks: first acquiring information to evaluate a potential project, then reporting his or her assessment of the project to the board, and finally implementing the project if it is adopted.

SAF Grads Continue to Achieve!

We are happy to advise that the CBV Institute’s 2019 Membership Qualification Exam (MQE) went off without a hitch this past September and its results were recently announced.   It gives us great pleasure to share the list of SAF grads below who represent over 9% of this year’s successful candidates.

BEYOND TRANSFORMATIONAL
Setting the benchmark early in thought leadership

BEYOND BOUNDARIES
SAF increases its tranformative research with three new faculty appointments

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 19^th, 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 12^th, 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.

BEYOND RELEVANT

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.