Revenue Recognition for Biotech Firms
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John Rhodes
Global Managing Partner
Deloitte & Touche LLP

John is the Global Managing Partner for the firm’s Life Sciences Industry Practice with 27 years of experience. In this role, he is responsible for the firm’s services to pharmaceutical, biotechnology and medical products companies and has worked with many large and small companies in all industry sectors. John has significant experience with pharmaceutical, biotechnology and medical products companies focusing on accounting and auditing, SEC reporting, business process and contracting issues, corporate compliance, strategic alliances, research and promotion collaborations, joint venture formations and mergers and acquisitions.

- Founder & Chair of the Annual Pharmaceutical Accounting & Reporting Congress, March 2005-March 2009
- Chair of First Annual Pharmaceutical Sarbanes Sustainability Congress, September 2005
- Editorial Board Member, Pharmaceutical Business Strategies Publication, Pharmaceutical Commerce
- Past Member, AICPA Expert Roundtable Pharmaceuticals and Biotechnology

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Dan Zwarn
Partner, National Office
PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP

Daniel is an Accounting Consulting Services Partner within PwC's US National Office, which has responsibility for formulating the firm’s positions on technical accounting, auditing and SEC reporting matters. Daniel is a member of the National Office revenue and compensation technical teams and has worked extensively with companies in the Biotech and Pharmaceutical industry. Dan has been the firm's representative on several of the EITF working groups on revenue-related matters and is also PwC's representative on the AICPA's Accounting Standards Executive Committee (AcSEC). Daniel has over 19 years of experience serving a variety of clients in the technology industry. Prior to joining the National Office he had worked in Silicon Valley for 11 years with technology clients ranging in size from early stage, pre-public companies to large multinational corporations. He has had significant experience assisting companies with Initial Public Offerings, acquisitions and mergers, business partnerships and international expansion.

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Nicolas Morgan
Partner
DLA Piper

Nick Morgan practices complex securities litigation in state and federal courts with special emphasis in representing issuers, officers and directors, investment funds, analysts, and brokers in connection with Securities and Exchange Commission and Financial Industry Regulatory Authority investigations, litigation, and arbitration. Mr. Morgan also advises clients in non-litigation settings, such as counseling public companies, funds and broker-dealer firms in securities compliance and corporate governance issues, conducting internal investigations and assisting in regulatory examinations by the SEC's Division of Corporation Finance and Office of Compliance Inspections and Examinations.

For more than seven years, from 1998 to 2005, Mr. Morgan prosecuted securities fraud in the SEC’s Enforcement Division, rising from staff attorney to branch chief to senior trial counsel. Additionally, Mr. Morgan served as a Special Assistant US Attorney for the Southern District of California, obtaining indictments against the principals of a $330 million subprime mortgage lending scheme.

While at the SEC, Mr. Morgan was lead counsel on a wide variety of litigated matters including prosecution of insider trading, investment adviser fraud, revenue recognition fraud, broker/dealer fraud, mutual fund market timing, and market manipulation. He was also lead trial counsel in a multi-week jury trial in the Southern District of California in which he obtained verdicts against the former CEO and CFO of a publicly traded company for violation of the antifraud provisions of the federal securities laws.

Mr. Morgan writes and speaks on SEC enforcement and securities litigation issues and has served as a faculty member, speaker, and panelist at conferences on corporate compliance and securities regulation.

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Michael McCollister
Senior Manager, Global Biotechnology Center
Ernst & Young LLP

Mike is a senior manager within the Ernst & Young Global Biotechnology Center located in Boston, Massachusetts. He has approximately 13 years of experience serving a variety of clients in the health and life sciences industries, including Fortune 100 corporations, entities with multiple operating locations, and early stage and start-up entities. His experience also includes serving clients with significant private equity participation. Mike’s current and past clients include American Renal Holdings, Inc., Navilyst Medical Holdings, Inc., Taligen Therapeutics, Inc., Virdante Pharmaceuticals, Inc., HCA Inc., Biocryst Pharmaceuticals, Inc., NitroMed, Inc., and AdvanSource Biomaterials Corp.

Mike’s primary expertise is accounting and financial reporting for health and life sciences enterprises. He has in-depth experience related to a number of technical accounting topics, SEC filing and reporting requirements, and the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002.

In addition to his client service responsibilities, Mike supports the activities of the Global Biotechnology Center. The Center is a physical hub dedicated to offering insight and delivering practical solutions to the assurance, risk, tax, transactional, and finance-related issues facing biotechnology corporate executives and their boards. The Center links Ernst & Young’s life sciences professionals through a strategic global network and facilitates collaboration and knowledge sharing in order to enable consistent, high quality, seamless service to our clients worldwide.

Mike’s role within the Center includes providing thought leadership related to accounting and financial reporting topics affecting the life sciences industry, developing service offerings relevant to life sciences companies, providing training materials for Ernst & Young life sciences professionals, and facilitating knowledge sharing among life sciences engagement teams.

Mike is a certified public accountant in Alabama, Tennessee and Massachusetts and received undergraduate (summa cum laude) and master’s (honors graduate) degrees in accounting from the University of Alabama.

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Jeff Pickett
Managing Partner
Connor Group

Jeff is Managing Partner for the firm's Technical Accounting practice, which provides finance executives with technical assistance on their most complex and critical accounting issues. Jeff is also the revenue subject matter expert at multiple companies across the United States including public and private biotechnology companies.

Jeff has directed multiple IPO engagements, revenue restatements, acquisitions, SEC comment letters, structuring of complex revenue contracts and collaborative agreements and several other technical accounting engagements. Before Connor Group, Jeff was an audit professional at Ernst & Young in Palo Alto where he managed the audits for various biotechnology clients, taught as a firm instructor and served as a contributor to Ernst & Young's Annual IPO CEO Retreat.

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Revenue Recognition for Biotech Firms
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