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News and Press Releases |
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HEADLINE:
3 Companies Finance Accounting Think Tank
By: Staff Writer - Reuters
Reuters. October 7, 2003
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EXCERPT: Three of the country's largest companies are funding an academic center to improve standards for accounting and stock research, hot button issues that have dogged all of corporate America. Columbia University's business school launched the center with grants from investment bank Morgan Stanley , IBM Corp. and General Electric Co.'s GE Foundation. The Center for Excellence in Accounting and Security Analysis, being chaired by former U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Arthur Levitt, will examine some of the same corporate governance and accounting concerns that GE, IBM and Morgan Stanley themselves have been touched by. "We will follow the basic concepts of independent academic endeavors," Stephen Penman, an accounting professor at Columbia and co-director of the center, told Reuters. The plan is to "identify who in the world are the best minds in these areas, assemble them into a project team and thrash it out." Trevor Harris, who heads Morgan Stanley's global valuation and accounting team for equity research, will also co-direct the center. Members of the advisory board include Sallie Krawcheck, chief executive of Citigroup's Smith Barney unit; John Biggs, former chief executive of pension manager TIAA-CREF; and Phil Ameen, GE's controller. Dozens of companies have been probed for accounting practices and face allegations of securities fraud during the last two years. Some of the highest profile scandals have involved false accounting charges at energy trader Enron Corp., telecommunications company Worldcom Inc., cable television provider Adelphia Communications Corp. and others.
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