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• The board's role in oversight of risks associated with potential fraud, the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, International Financial Reporting Standards, M&A, and extended business relationships.
• Steps the board can take to stay informed on key issues and associated risks.
• Financial executives' responsibility to the board in addressing risk factors related to key issues.

• The findings of a joint study that investigates how boards and shareowners have endeavored to engage in meaningful dialogue.
• How financial executives can support communication models.
• Identifying the business issues to be addressed by director-shareholder communications.

Hear about the constraints, risks, and benefits associated with open discussions between boards and investors about governance and compensation.

• Board composition, board leadership, classified boards, director independence, and other governance data.
• Audit committee trends of importance to financial executives.
• Results from the 2008 proxy season.
• Trends impacted by shareholder activism, governance rating firms, and regulations.

• How much authority might be granted to the subsidiary board.
• Subsidiary board practices with regard to autonomous board members, support from parent-company personnel, and committee structure.
• What information should be shared between the parent and subsidiary boards and how the transfer of information might be managed.

• If the U.S. and UK governance models are appropriate for other countries.
• Governance in sovereign wealth funds and other capital sources investing in American companies.
• The potential convergence of regulations and practices such as European Union-wide standards and regulations.
• Governance in foreign subsidiaries,including country advisory boards.

• The board's role in becoming a risk-intelligent organization.
• Mechanisms to assist the board and management in the identification and continual monitoring of enterprise risks.
• How other board committees should be involved in the risk management process.

Sustainability: A New Era for Enterprise Value?

• How environmental and social performance factors may change financial reporting requirements, including the expansion of risk factor disclosures by public companies.
• Financial implications of potential U.S. carbon regulations that could force the monetization of such emissions.
• Possible effects of these issues on customer perception, brand equity, and human resources.

• Why companies are dissatisfied with many of the nonfinancial aspects of outsourcing.
• The five stages of effective outsourcing programs, including rightsizing the deal, building a solid foundation, selecting the vendor, striking a deal, and post-deal monitoring.
• Effective outsourcing practices, including robust financial analysis, governance, and procurement practices.

• Recession factors, including the credit crunch, housing slump, waning consumer confidence, and slowing factory orders.
• Lessons from the last downturn, including overly complex product lines, high costs of employee benefits and compliance, and failure to act quickly.
• Strategies for staying ahead, including smart growth, simpler business models, shifting fixed costs to variable costs, and managing talent.

• Causes of the gap, including varying expectations and tax resource constraints.
• Actions CFOs, boards, and tax executives can take, including education and changes in roles and responsibilities.
• Investing in tax information, technology, processes and policies, and people and organization.

• The CFO's changing roles, including strategist, catalyst, operator, and steward.
• Important questions about strategic rationale, top-down and bottom-up synergy targets, integration planning, operating model development, first month-end and first-quarter close, and Sarbanes-Oxley readiness.
• Preparing for the close, day-one launch, and post-close — creating a finance vision, controlling integration, tracking synergies, and developing a finance integration blueprint.

• Key strategies for dealing with the movement toward IFRS.
• Risks and opportunities of converting to IFRS at the subsidiary-entity level.
• Efficient methods for making the transition to IFRS.

Mergers and Acquisitions: Why Tax Accounting Will Never Be the Same Again

• How the new statements affect tax accounting for uncertain tax positions, deferred taxes, and valuation allowances.
• Tax consequences at transition for past and prospective acquisitions.
• Fine-tuning tax due-diligence practices, including pressure points on effective tax rate, FIN 48 liabilities, and valuation allowances.

• Background and objectives of the project.
• Summary of the key differences between FAS 109 and IAS 12 that are proposed to be eliminated, and differences that may remain, including accounting for uncertainty in income taxes.
• Overview of the comment letter process and how to get involved.

• Accounting for state tax law changes, including gross receipts-type taxes.
• Computing state deferred taxes and the effective state tax rate.
• Ongoing FIN 48 multistate tax issues, including the challenges around “effectively settled.”

• Technical requirements of FIN 48, including identification, measurement, and recognition of uncertain tax positions.
• Potential implementation challenges for hedge funds and private equity funds, including potential U.S. trade or business issues and non-U.S. tax issues, such as withholding taxes.
• Application of FIN 48 to fund management companies – the need for U.S. GAAP financials and cross-border tax issues for global investment managers, including transfer pricing.

Understand key challenges of FIN 48 for private investment firms and how you can jumpstart or fine-tune your implementation plans.

• What are material weaknesses and the related disclosure requirements?
• Leading causes of tax-related material weaknesses and strategies for addressing them.
• A technical overview of typical issues causing tax-related restatements.
• Interaction of material weaknesses and restatements; if I have one, do I have the other?

Financial Reporting

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• The proposed amendment to change current hedge accounting rules.
• FASB's decision to eliminate qualifying special-purpose entities and its impact on securitization accounting.
• FASB's project to revise the current consolidation model for variable interest entities.
• The latest SEC developments on allowing U.S. issuers the option to apply International Financial Reporting Standards.

• Quarterly update of accounting developments.
• Recent positions of the FASB and SEC staffs.
• Other hot topics.

• Issues not resolved at the March 2008 meeting.
• Additional issues added to the EITF agenda.

• Details of the SEC’s proposed rule and implications for SEC registrants.
• Suggested approaches for implementing XBRL as part of your financial reporting process.
• Potential benefits of using XBRL beyond compliance.

Learn more about the possible impact this new requirement can have on your financial reporting.

• An overview of the proposed requirements with a focus on the FASB’s preferred approach.
• Illustrations of how the proposed requirements change company balance sheets, income statements, financial ratios, and performance measures.
• A comparison to related International Financial Reporting Standards guidance. The FASB’s preferred approach represents a radical change to current practice.

• Quarterly update of accounting developments.
• Recent positions of the FASB and SEC staffs.
• Other hot topics.

• Issues not resolved at the November 2007 meeting.
• Additional issues added to the EITF agenda.

• An overview of the U.S. wealth-transfer tax system and potential costs to private enterprise owners who don't plan ahead.
• How successful families have traditionally passed wealth through trusts and other tax-efficient vehicles.
• Why lower business valuations and interest rates near historic lows may provide favorable conditions for launching tax-efficient succession plans now.

• The global landscape — key drivers forcing mid-sized and private companies to address their globalization strategy.
• The primary challenges and opportunities to consider as your company evaluates expanding it’s global footprint.
• International tax considerations that may impact your global plan.

• Types of risks private companies may face.
• What private companies should be doing to identify and manage the range of risks for their organizations.
• A process for dealing with the mission critical risks to help your company weather these potentially catastrophic issues.

• Drivers of rising health care costs, including catastrophic illnesses, the aging workforce, and increasing technology and services utilization.
• The impact of expanding costs on the total rewards concept and related decisions.
• Regulatory changes and leading practices aimed at improving the productivity and health of the private company employees.

Managing Identity Risks: Is Your Enterprise Secure?

• Implementing stronger controls given the current identity crisis.
• Building stronger identity and data management program elements.
• Survey results of leading companies on key privacy and data protection activities.

• Factoring long-term cyclicality and risk into capital planning and methods for managing the portfolio dynamically.
• A portfolio view of capital planning projects – systems, tools, and data needed for effective what-if analyses at the portfolio level.
• Capital planning and investor relations – innovative ways of communicating with the capital markets.

• Red flags, common fraud patterns, and top fraud schemes more likely to appear in an economic downturn.
• Leading practices that companies can employ to detect, deter, and prevent fraud during times of cost-cutting and resource constraints.
• Critical steps in the investigation process if allegations of fraud arise, including internal and outside regulatory investigations.

• An overview of key current market conditions, including deal volume and M&A trends.
• The impact of these conditions and trends on deal-making, including financing, terms and conditions, due diligence, and board participation.
• Adjusting your M&A strategy and approaching the deal process differently.

• Some of the key effects of short- and long-term market impacts on fair value for financial, tax, or investment reporting.
• Market issues contributing to the current turbulence, including tighter credit, currency fluctuations, and interest rates.
• Valuation modeling techniques that can help you account for current market conditions.

• Discovery readiness, including cost-effective litigation management, managing holds, and addressing legacy data concerns.
• Improving document collection, harvesting, and review while managing costs and risk in a global economy.
• Electronic data hosting and processing, including development of a universal standard and new data types.

• SEC enforcement actions over the past few years, including both resolved and unresolved cases.
• What SEC Enforcement task forces and working groups are focusing on now.
• How organizations can prepare effectively for a possible inquiry or investigation, including corporate governance, self-examination, self-disclosure, and cooperation.