Group Overview
The Financial Reporting and Analysis Thought Leadership Group follows issues and events affecting financial reporting, corporate disclosure, and accounting standards. Its primary mission is to keep CFANY members informed about these issues. The group also comments on proposed new financial reporting standards (before Regulators and Standard Setters).
Leadership
Ethan has been talking to bank treasurers and CFOs of large and small since the early 1980s, when he began his career on Wall Street doing overnight repo specials on the Government Trading desk at Dillon Read, & Co, with the Fed Funds rate at 21 percent and the coupon on the then-new “long bond” was 13.875 percent soon after graduating Columbia College in 1979 with a major in Philosophy. Going back to school to graduate with an MBA from NYU’s Gradual School of Business in 1988 with a degree in Finance, Ethan went to work in the Bank Analysis Department at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, where he covered large multinational banks during the financial crisis in the early 1990s, and also contributed to internal public policy memoranda on accounting and risk-based capital issues. After the Fed, Ethan joined Salomon Brothers in 1994 and covered both US and Yankee bank bond issuers in the Corporate Bond Research group and was regularly top-ranked in the annual surveys conducted by the magazine, Institutional Investor. Consolidated into present-day Citigroup, Ethan moved from research to the bank resource role in 2003, where he led the fixed income sales effort to cover US banks in the Agency MBS and derivatives space and also launched what quickly became a very popular, monthly newsletter addressed to bank treasurers, called The Bank Treasury Newsletter. Retiring from Citigroup in 2016, Ethan re-launched his newsletter as a paid-subscription and recently sold it to Kroll Bond Rating Agency, where he holds the position of Senior Bank Analyst, and will continue to publish the newsletter as The Bank Treasury Newsletter by KBRA.
Eric Linder, CFA, is founder and president of SavaNet LLC, a financial analysis software company that develops and markets applications for the publication and analysis of analyst financial models. Using his experience as an equity analyst, portfolio manager and software developer, Mr. Linder is actively working with investors, reporting agencies, industry organizations, and research providers to implement XBRL to best meet the needs of individual investors and professional financial analysts. Prior to founding SavaNet in 2003, Mr. Linder was a portfolio manager at hedge funds Falcon Management and NWI Investments where he was directly responsible for the active management of domestic and foreign equity and derivative portfolios. From 1991 to 1997, Mr. Linder held various positions with J.P. Morgan Securities in the corporate finance, capital markets and equity research divisions, culminating in the position of senior equity analyst. Mr. Linder is a CFA charterholder and vice chairman of the CFA Society New York’ Corporate Reporting and Analysis Committee. He was a member of the CFA Institute’s XBRL Working Group and played a leading role in developing the national US GAAP taxonomies as member of the XBRL US organization. He graduated summa cum laude from Dartmouth College where he holds a degree in economics.
Chenyao (Jane) Soong, CFA, CPAUpcoming Financial Reporting & Analysis Group Events
Spotting Financial Shenanigans in Corporate Filings
Featured Past Event — April 19, 2021
Do those quarterly reports look just too good to be true? Sometimes, larger-than-life updates can seem like a great opportunity … until reality sets in.
Learn how to avoid giving companies the benefit of the doubt when assessing reported information. This seminar will cover a few key areas in which shrewd observers are likely to encounter inconsistencies: some general “breeding grounds” for troubled conditions, earnings manipulation, cash flow, key metrics, and acquisition-accounting details.
What Investors Needs to Know About Audits
Past Event — Feb. 23, 2021
An in-depth conversation that will familiarize investors with the audit process, highlighting relevant case studies and procedural changes in light of recent PCAOB and SEC actions. Audits are a critical part of ensuring the veracity of reported financial information, which investors depend on to develop and maintain a sound investment strategy.
Still Lower for Even Longer: What Will It’s Impact Be?
Featured Past Event — Nov. 20, 2020
Interest rates have been low since the Global Financial Crisis. With COVID-19, they are now even lower and seem unlikely to rise for years from current multi-century lows. How will this impact investors and fixed income markets? How are important fixed-income investors responding to this new paradigm?
Non-GAAP Financial Reporting
Past Event — Sep. 28, 2020
Today, more than 90% of S&P 500 companies use non-GAAP financial measures to supplement and explain their financial results. Metrics such as adjusted EPS, EBITDA and FFO are often the primary measures by which analysts and investors interpret corporate performance. Over the past two decades, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has kept a close eye on this important trend and issued guidance to ensure, for example, that non-GAAP metrics are not displayed more prominently than GAAP and that they are reconciled to the most closely associated GAAP measures. In the recent batch of earnings reports, companies are including additional disclosures to communicate the impact of the pandemic on their financial results, some of which may be incorporated into their non-GAAP financial measures. Our panel will revisit the issue of non-GAAP financial reporting, assessing how these disclosures have evolved in recent years, with a special look at pandemic-related disclosures, to offer insight and guidance on evaluating corporate performance in the current environment.
