Speakers
Steven Balsam
Steven Balsam, Professor of Accounting and Senior Merves Research Fellow at the Fox School of Business at Temple University, obtained his Ph.D. from the City University of New York (Baruch College) in 1991. His research interests are executive compensation, earnings management, and capital markets. In addition to publishing a book on executive compensation (Executive Compensation: An Introduction to Practice and Theory, WorldatWork), he has published articles in academic journals including The Accounting Review, Journal of Accounting Research, Journal of Accounting and Economics, Contemporary Accounting Research, Journal of the American Taxation Association, Journal of Accounting and Public Policy, Journal of Accounting, Auditing and Finance, and Accounting Horizons; and practitioner journals including the Journal of Accountancy. He has been widely quoted in the media, has given expert witness testimony on executive compensation to the United States Senate Committee on Finance and is the moderator of the AICPA video Accounting for Stock Options and Other Stock-Based Compensation. Prior to coming to Temple University he taught at Baruch College and the University of Rochester. Before entering academia he was a Certified Public Accountant working for the international accounting firm of Ernst & Young.
Rajiv D. Banker
Dr. Banker is the Merves Chair in Accounting and Information Technology at the Fox School. He is a world-renowned scholar, an innovative leader and a distinguished teacher. He received a Doctorate in Business Administration from Harvard University concentrating in Planning and Control Systems. Prior to joining the Temple University, Dr. Banker was the Dean and Anderson Chair in Management at the A. Gary Anderson School of Management at the University of California, Riverside. He also has held distinguished professorial and endowed chair positions at Carnegie Mellon University, the University of Minnesota and the University of Texas at Dallas.
Dr. Banker is internationally recognized as a leader in interdisciplinary research in management. His interests range from analytical modeling to statistical analysis of emerging business questions, often in collaboration with business or policy organizations. He has published more than 100 articles in prestigious research journals including Management Science, Accounting Review, Journal of Accounting and Economics, Journal of Accounting Research, Operations Research, Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, MIS Quarterly, Information Systems Research, Communications of ACM, IEEE Transactions in Software Engineering, Academy of Management Journal, Strategic Management Journal, and Econometrica.
One of his papers is ranked fourth highest in citations in the 50-year history of Management Science. Dr. Banker is recognized by the ISI Web of Science as one of only 243 scholars in management and economics for fundamental contribution to science. He has served in senior editorial capacity on leading research journals in information systems, accounting and operations management.
Dr. Banker has been the recipient of three teaching awards, and has supervised nine award-winning doctoral dissertations.
Sudipta Basu
Sudipta Basu is an Associate Professor of Accounting at the Fox School of Business Management at Temple University. His research on the effects of conservatism and other accounting principles on the properties of reported earnings and analysts’ earnings forecasts was published in the Journal of Accounting and Economics, Journal of Accounting Research, Review of Accounting Studies and Journal of Business Finance and Accounting. His recent research on the origins of accounting appears in Accounting Horizons and Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA. Sudipta is an Associate Editor or Editorial Board Member of the Journal of Accounting and Economics, Journal of Accounting Research, Journal of Business Finance and Accounting, Asia-Pacific Journal of Accounting and Economics and China Journal of Accounting Research. Sudipta received his Ph.D. in Accounting from the University of Rochester, and has taught previously at Emory University and Baruch College, City University of New York.
John Brozovsky
Dr. John Brozovsky is an associate professor of accounting at Virginia Tech where he has been teaching since 1989. He has published in a number of journals including Accounting Organization and Society, Journal of Accounting Auditing and Finance, Auditing: A Journal of Theory and Practice, Accounting Horizon's, Issues in Accounting Education, Accounting Historian's Journal, Journal of Accountancy, CPA Journal, Today's CPA, Ohio CPA Journal, Management Accounting, and many others.
He presents regularly at academic and professional conferences. He worked with FASB on the Codification which is due to become US GAAP this coming summer. Most recently he headed up a team of people at Virginia Tech to create supplemental IFRS material to be including in Intermediate Accounting.
Donal Byard
Donal Byard is currently serving as an academic fellow in the Office of the Chief Accountant of the Securities and Exchange Commission. He is currently participating in the analysis of the IFRS Roadmap comment letters.
Dr. Byard is an Associate Professor of Accounting in the Zicklin School of Business at Baruch College – City University of New York (CUNY). He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Maryland in 1998, a B.B.S. degree in Accounting from the University of Limerick (Ireland), and an M.B.S. degree in Banking and Finance from University College Dublin. Mr. Byard teaches both undergraduate and graduate financial accounting. His research primarily focuses on the role of financial analysts as information intermediaries in capital markets, specifically their processing of financial disclosures. His work has been published in the Journal of Accounting Research, The Accounting Review, and the Journal of Accounting and Public Policy.
David Cairns
David Cairns advises companies, accounting firms, government agencies and standard setting bodies on the application of IFRS and provides extensive IFRS training. He was the secretary-general of the International Accounting Standards Committee from 1985 to 1994. He is the author of several authoritative texts and surveys on IFRS.
David Cairns is currently an advisor to the World Bank’s Center for Financial Reporting Reform in Vienna. He was the director of an ICAEW project the European Commission on the evaluation of the implementation of IFRS in the European Union from October 2006 to June 2007 and of the Common Content project from 2001 until March 2009.
David Cairns is a member of the UK’s Financial Reporting Review Panel and the UK Accounting Standards Board’s Financial Services and Other Special Industries Committee. He is a member of the IASB’s Working Group on Accounting Standards for Small and Medium-sized Entities. He is a member of the BNA/TM Accounting Policy and Practice Advisory Board advisory board.
David Cairns is Visiting Professor in Accounting at the London School of Economics and Political Science where he teaches international accounting. From 2009, he will also teach at the Said Business School at Oxford University.
Frederick Choi
Frederick D.S. Choi is Dean Emeritus and Distinguished Service Professor of Business at New York University Stern School of Business. He served as Vice Dean and Dean of the Undergraduate College at Stern from 1995-2004.
Professor Choi has been with NYU Stern for more than 25 years. He has authored numerous books including International Accounting (Prentice-Hall), International Finance and Accounting Handbook (John Wiley), International Capital Markets in a World of Accounting Differences (Irwin) and Globalization of Financial Accounting and Reporting (FEI). He has published in many journals including Journal of Accounting Research, Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Financial Analysts Journal, Journal of Accountancy, and the Journal of International Business Studies.
Professor Choi has lectured at numerous institutions including INSEAD (France), the Cranfield School of Management (England), Japan America Institute of Management Science, University of Bocconi (Italy) and the Stockholm School of Economics (Sweden). Professor Choi also served as a member of the First American Visiting Team to establish the National Center for Industrial Science and Technology Management Development in the Peoples Republic of China. He is a fellow of the Academy of International Business, a recipient of the Citibank Excellence in Teaching Award, a recipient of the American Accounting Association’s Outstanding International Accounting Educator Award and was the first academician appointed to the Board of Trustees of the Financial Executives Research Foundation.
Professor Choi is a member of the American Accounting Association, the Academy of International Business, Financial Executives Institute, Phi Kappa Phi, Beta Gamma Sigma and Beta Alpha Psi. He is the founding editor of the Journal of International Financial Management and Accounting.
Trevor Harris
Professor Harris’ practical and research experience has covered most areas of the use of accounting information for valuation, investment and management decisions, with a particular focus on global aspects.
He originally joined the Columbia Business School faculty in 1983, and was the Jerome A. Chazen Professor of International Business, Director of the Chazen Institute of International Business and Chair of the Accounting Department, prior to joining Morgan Stanley as a Managing Director and Head of the Global Valuation and Accounting Team in 2000. He rejoined the faculty of Columbia Business School in July 2008.
He has taught the core courses in financial and managerial accounting, and electives in corporate financial reporting and international financial statement analysis. He created a new course “Fundamental Analysis for Investment and Management Decisions” in Spring 2009. He was the recipient of the Margaret Chandler Award for Commitment to Excellence in teaching EMBA class of 1998 and 2001, the Chazen Institute Prize for Innovation in Teaching, 1996, and the Singhvi Prize for Excellence in Teaching, 1985. He is co-Director of Columbia’s Center for Excellence in Accounting and Security Analysis.
In his time in Equity Research at Morgan Stanley he was the primary author of the Apples-to-Apples research series focusing on global sector valuations and earnings quality issues, and led the development of Morgan Stanley’s ModelWare project. He wrote extensively on earnings quality, company-specific investment ideas and global pension and retiree benefit issues and was voted to the Institutional Investor All American Team during his time in research. He has also worked with corporate and investor clients on disclosure and valuation issues, and capital raising situations. Through September 2008, Professor Harris was a Managing Director and Vice Chairman at Morgan Stanley, working on special projects for Firm Management in all business areas. Working with senior management, he was responsible for developing strategic solutions, and enhancing the management information systems of the firm. He became a Senior Advisor to Morgan Stanley in October 2008.
He served on the Standards Advisory Council to the International Accounting Standards Board until November 2008, serves on the Users’ Advisory Council to the Financial Accounting Standards Board and was a member of the International Capital Markets Advisory Committee at the New York Stock Exchange until its dissolution. Professor Harris has provided advice on international accounting, controllership, valuation and investor relations issues to many large, international corporations , investment firms and regulators.
He has published widely on valuation and accounting issues, in both academic and practitioner journals. He has made presentations at over 200 conferences, institutes and universities around the world and participated on numerous industry and professional roundtables.
Scott T. Hartman
Scott is a member of the Philadelphia, Pennsylvania office of Ernst & Young LLP. He provides over twenty years of experience working with both publicly and privately owned companies, primarily in the US Power & Utilities and manufacturing industries. He specializes in the area of accounting and auditing, with significant experience in multi-national consolidation coordination, financial reporting and Securities and Exchange Commission filings and registrations.
Since 2005, he has been significantly involved in the firm’s IFRS initiatives by serving on the U.S. Mid-Atlantic SubArea IFRS Desk and coordinating the firm’s local IFRS education efforts and by serving as a member in both the US Power & Utilities Sector and the Global Utilities IFRS Group.
John Hepp
John is a partner in the National Professional Standards Group located in the Chicago office. John started his professional career in the National Office at Grant Thornton LLP but spent several years working overseas in Europe, Asia, and Africa on accounting and auditing policy matters and professional regulation including curriculum and continuing education design. John’s primary technical areas are accounting for leases and postretirement benefits. John also participates in the firm’s real estate industry group and helps review international accounting developments. A former project manager at the FASB, John helps monitor developments at the FASB for the firm and attends meetings on a rotating basis. John participated in the FASB codification project by mapping the leasing literature, inventory, cost of sales, airlines, health care, and property, plant, and equipment.
John is a CPA (Illinois), a CMA, and has a Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin Madison. John is a member of the AICPA, Institute of Management Accountants, American Association of Accountants (AAA), European Association of Accountants, and the Illinois CPA Society. John serves as a member of the Professional Standards Committee of the Illinois CPA Society (chair for 2007-09) and is a member of the Financial Accounting and Reporting Section, the International Accounting Section and the Auditing Section of AAA.
S.P. Kothari
S.P. Kothari serves as the Global Head of Equity Research, supporting Barclays Global Investors’ equity investment strategies. BGI is world’s largest asset management company, with over a trillion dollars under management. Prior to joining BGI, S.P. was Deputy Dean and Gordon Y Billard Professor in Management at the Sloan School of Management, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Previously, he was the Head of the Department of Economics, Finance, and Accounting at the MIT Sloan School of Management. In 2005-06, he was Thomas Henry Carroll-Ford Visiting Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School. Dr. Kothari is an editor of the Journal of Accounting & Economics, a world-renowned academic research journal in accounting. His research focuses on financial reporting and valuation, asset allocation, explaining the diversity in international accounting practices, use of employee stock options for compensating executives and accounting for stock options, evaluating investment performance, and corporate uses of derivatives for hedging and speculation. He served on the Board of Directors of Vicarious Visions (www.vvisions.com) from 1998-2004 and he was a Senior Consultant with Charles River Associates International (www.crai.com), a business-economics and litigation support consulting firm, for eight years. He has consulted with many large corporations, including leading US and international banks, Australian television broadcast corporations, US steel companies, E&Y, KPMG, PriceWaterhouse Coopers, and the U.S. Department of Justice.
Mark Lang
Mark Lang is Thomas W. Hudson, Jr./Deloitte and Touche L.L.P. Distinguished Professor at the Kenan-Flagler Business School, University of North Carolina. His research interests include international accounting and analysis; stock market valuation of accounting information; employee stock option valuation, taxation and exercise behavior; causes and effects of voluntary disclosure; and multinational tax strategy. His recent research has focused on determinants and consequences of accounting quality and transparency internationally. He currently serves on the steering group of the FASB’s Financial Accounting Standards Advisory Committee, and was previously a member of the IASB's Share-Based Payment Advisory Group, the AICPAs Blockage Factor Task Force and the American Accounting Association’s Financial Advisory Committee. His research has appeared in a variety of journals including the Journal of Accounting Research, Accounting Review, Journal of Accounting and Economics, Journal of Finance, Quarterly Journal of Economics, Management Science, Journal of Public Economics, and Journal of Investment Management. He has served on the editorial boards of the Journal of Accounting Research, Accounting Review, Review of Accounting Studies, Contemporary Accounting Research,Journal of International Financial Management and Accounting, and Journal of International Accounting Research.He received his PhD and MBA from the University of Chicago.
Cheryl Linthicum
Cheryl Linthicum served as Academic Fellow with the SEC in 2005-2006 and in 2007-2008. During her first tour at the SEC, she served as in the Office of the Chief Accountant. During 2007-2008, she served in the Office of the Chief Accountant in the Division of Corporation Finance, where she participated in IFRS filing reviews and led staff training.
Currently, Cheryl is the Clear Channel Worldwide Faculty Fellow and an Associate Professor of Accounting at the University of Texas at San Antonio. She teaches financial and international accounting at the undergraduate, executive MBA and PhD levels and has been honored with college level and university-wide teaching awards.
Cheryl earned a PhD from Oklahoma State University and holds CPA and CMA designations. Her research interests include the application of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) and the value relevance of 20-F reconciliations. Her publications appear in Journal of Accounting and Public Policy, Journal of International Accounting Research, Journal of International Financial Management and Accounting, and Accounting Horizons. Cheryl currently serves as the President of the International Accounting Section of the American Accounting Association and as a member of the AICPA’s Staff Advisory Group for Internationalizing the CPA Exam.
Paul Munter
Paul Munter is a Partner in the Department of Professional Practice—Audit with KPMG. He serves as the lead technical partner and professional practice leader for the US firm’s IFRS activities and also serves on KPMG’s Global IFRS Panel which is responsible for establishing KPMG positions on the application of IFRS.
His also is involved in the development of firm positions in response to proposals from the IASB, IFRIC, FASB, SEC and other standard setters as well as the development of the firm’s guidance and publications including Comparison of IFRS to US GAAP and First Impressions: Business Combinations (joint IASB/FASB project).
He served as the Academic Fellow in the Office of the Chief Accountant at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission where he worked on many of the Commission’s Sarbanes-Oxley initiatives and rule-making activities. Previously, he served as KPMG Professor and Chairman of the Department of Accounting at the University of Miami in Coral Gables, Florida. He earned his PhD in accounting at the University of Colorado. He received his B.S. and M.S. degrees from Fresno State University. He is a CPA in New York, Florida, and Colorado.
Mr.. Munter was honored by the Texas Society of CPAs as its first “Outstanding Discussion Leader.” He has also been honored by the Florida Institute of CPAs as its Outstanding Educator and he was honored by Beta Alpha Psi as the National Business Information Professional of the Year.
Stephen H. Penman
Stephen H. Penman is the George O. May Professor and the Morgan Stanley Research Scholar in the Graduate School of Business, Columbia University. He is also co-director of the Center for Excellence in Accounting and Security Analysis at Columbia Business School. Prior to his appointment at Columbia in 1999 he was the L.H. Penney Professor in the Walter A. Haas School of Business at the University of California at Berkeley. From 1990-95 he served as Chairman of the Professional Accounting Program and Chairman of the Accounting Faculty at Berkeley where he initiated and chaired the Haas School’s Annual Conference on Financial Reporting. Penman has served as a Visiting Professor at Columbia University and the London Business School, as the Jan Wallander Visiting Professor at the Stockholm School of Economics, and as an Honorary Professor at City University of Hong Kong.
Professor Penman received a first-class honors degree in Commerce from the University of Queensland, Australia, and M.B.A. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Chicago. His research deals with the valuation of equity and the role of accounting information in security analysis. He has published widely in finance and accounting journals and has delivered numerous lectures and seminars on accounting policy, fundamental analysis, and equity evaluation for academic and professional audiences. In 1991 he was awarded the notable Contribution to Accounting Literature Award by the American Accounting Association and the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants, and in 1997 received the Institute for Quantitative Research (INQUIRE) Prize. In 2002 he was awarded the American Accounting Association and Deloitte & Touche Wildman Medal for his book, Financial Statement Analysis and Security Valuation, published by McGraw-Hill/Irwin and now in its fourth edition. He is an editor of the Review of Accounting Studies.
Ray Pfeiffer
Ray Pfeiffer is currently serving a one-year term as the Financial Accounting Standards Board Research Fellow in the FASB offices in Norwalk, Connecticut. As Research Fellow, he works to help to bring academic research to the attention of FASB Board members and Staff to help in their work on standard setting and other projects. He also serves as a liaison between the FASB and the academic community to improve mutual communication and understanding.
Prior to the FASB appointment and following thereafter, Ray is a Professor at the Isenberg School of Management at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He received a BA in Accounting from Moravian College in 1987 and a Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina in 1994. He teaches in the undergraduate, masters, and Ph.D. programs at UMass, where he began his academic career in Fall 1994. His principal teaching interests include external financial reporting, financial accounting policy and regulation, and capital markets research in accounting. He is the recipient of the University-wide Distinguished Teaching Award (the University's most prestigious prize for classroom instruction), the Isenberg School of Management's Outstanding Teacher Award, and he has been both a Lilly Teaching Fellow and Mentor.
Professor Pfeiffer's research focuses on financial accounting issues including: stock market anomalies; valuation of earnings components; earnings forecasts; economic consequences of accounting regulation; and earnings management. His research has been published in The Accounting Review, Journal of Accounting Research, Journal of Accounting and Economics, and Journal of Accounting and Public Policy and elsewhere, and he serves as an ad hoc reviewer for several academic accounting journals. He is regularly invited to present his research work at other universities and at academic conferences.
Prior to studying at North Carolina, he worked for the audit staff of Deloitte for three years in Allentown, Pennsylvania and Raleigh, North Carolina, and was a licensed CPA in both states.
Jenice Prather-Kinsey
Jenice Prather-Kinsey is a School of Accountancy professor at the University of Missouri. She has a BS in Business Administration from Lindenwood University, a Masters in Accountancy form the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana and a Ph.D. from the University of Alabama. Before earning a doctorate, she earned her CPA license in the State of Tennessee, where she taught as an accounting professor at the University of Tennessee-Chattanooga. She currently teaches international accounting--including travel to Europe--, cost accounting and a Topics Ph.D. Seminar. While at the University of Missouri, she took a two-year leave from 1990-1992 to be a Research Associate at Washington University in St. Louis. She has also visited as a lecturer at The University of the Western Cape and University of Cape Town, both in South Africa.
She has published more than 20 articles in refereed academic accounting journals, including Abacus, Contemporary Accounting Research, Accounting Horizons, European Accounting Review, International Journal of Accounting Research, Journal of Accounting, Auditing, and Finance, Journal of International Accounting Research, Journal of International Financial Management and Accounting; and has presented her research on every continent of the world except the Antarctica. She coauthors a textbook: Cost Accounting: Foundations and Evolutions, 6th edition with Thomson Southwestern Publishers and is currently solo authoring an academic international accounting book on developing countries for Routledge.
She is a member of the American Accounting Association, American Institute of Certified Public Accountants, Beta Alpha Psi, European Accounting Association, Institute of Management Accountants, The International Association for Accounting Education and Research, and National Association of Black Accountants. She served on the State of Missouri Gaming Commission from 1993-1999 and is on the Missouri Credit Union Board of Directors. She is immediate past-president of the American Accounting Association International Accounting Section. Her current pursuit is an administrative position in an accredited business school. Jenice is married to Reginald Kinsey and has two sons: Rob and Winston. Her hobbies include reading, gardening, aerobics, and cycling.
Sherif Sakr
Sherif Sakr is a partner in Deloitte’s Complex Accounting & Valuation Group of the Regulatory & Capital Markets Consulting practice. Sherif serves as a capital markets specialist for several of Deloitte’s global strategic clients, and is considered one of the Firm’s specialists in areas around financial instruments, fair value measurements and IFRS. He has extensive experience assisting different financial services companies in implementing several complex accounting standards under both U.S. GAAP and IFRS. He has served several of Deloitte’s global strategic clients with the implementation of fair value related standards. He has experiences dealing with IFRS first-time adoption, implementing U.S. GAAP and IFRS standards, and reconciling IFRS financial statements to U.S. GAAP and vice versa. He also has experiences with mergers & acquisitions and initial public offerings. Sherif currently leads the technical accounting work stream within the northeast region for Deloitte’s IFRS Integrated Market Offering in both Banking & Securities and Investment Management industries.
Prior to joining the U.S. member firm of Deloitte, Sherif worked in Europe and the Middle East where he worked on several audit and consulting engagements specifically providing accounting and consulting services to a variety of companies, including major investment banks, insurance companies, finance and investments companies and different multinational corporations with specific focus on international accounting standards. He also had experience with derivatives and treasury-related infrastructure projects, including accounting and risk management policy development, process design and reengineering, best practice and controls assessments and implementation of derivatives and treasury workstation systems.
Sherif is a frequent speaker on accounting topics related to global capital markets, structured transactions, derivatives and hedging activities, fair value measurements and IFRS in front of national and international conferences. Sherif is the Recipient of the 2007 President’s Volunteer Service Award from the President of the United States in recognition for his global volunteer activities while working with the United States Agency for International Development providing IFRS education for local standard setters, exchange commissioners and central bankers in several emerging markets.
Sherif, who is a Certified Public Accountant, is a member in the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants and a member of the New York State Society of Certified Public Accountants. Sherif currently serves as a member of the executive board of the New York State Society of Certified Public Accountants (Manhattan/Bronx Chapter).
Terry Warfield
Terry Warfield is the Robert and Monica Beyer Professor of Accounting and Director of the Arthur Andersen Center for Financial Reporting and Control at the University of Wisconsin - Madison. Professor Warfield received a B.S. and M.B.A. from Indiana University and a Ph.D. from the University of Iowa. Professor Warfield's area of expertise is financial accounting. Prior to his academic career, Professor Warfield worked for five years in the banking industry and from 1995-1996 he served as the Academic Accounting Fellow in the Office of the Chief Accountant at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in Washington D.C. While on the Staff, he worked on projects related to financial instruments, financial institutions, and helped coordinate a symposium on intangible asset financial reporting.
Professor Warfield's primary research interests concern financial accounting standards and disclosure policies, including the effects of accounting information and disclosures on securities markets. He has published articles in various scholarly and practice oriented outlets. He has served on the editorial board of The Accounting Review, Accounting Horizons, and Issues in Accounting Education and he has served as a reviewer for many other accounting and business journals. He has served the American Accounting Association on several committees and he is currently one of three academic members of the Advisory Council to the Financial Accounting Standards Board.
Professor Warfield teaches intermediate and masters level courses in financial reporting and he has served on numerous PhD dissertation committees (nine as the Chair). He has received teaching awards at both the University of Iowa and the University of Wisconsin. He is co-author (with D. Kieso and J. Weygandt) of Intermediate Accounting, (13th Edition) and Intermediate Accounting: Principles and Analysis (2nd Edition).
Mark Watermasysk
Mark Watermasysk is a senior manager at PricewaterhouseCoopers. Mark started his professional career in Philadelphia and spent three years working in Europe focused on accounting and auditing matters for both IFRS and US GAAP filers as well as numerous conversion projects. Mark is part of the US IFRS Conversion Specialist network and has been part of the project team responsible for writing the IFRS and US GAAP similarities and differences publications for the past two years. Mark has significant experience serving both public and private clients as well as many private-equity owned clients and US subsidiaries of foreign registrants, many of whom have gone through IFRS conversions.