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FASB Accounting Standards Codification: Understanding the New System
LIVE webcast
Keira Lichtenstein
CPA, Technical Manager, Accounting and Auditing Publications
American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA)
Keira Lichtenstein is a Technical Manager in the Accounting and Auditing Publications team at the AICPA in Durham, North Carolina. At the AICPA, Keira works on Investment Company, Real Estate, and General Audit publications. She is responsible for writing, maintaining, and updating Audit and Accounting Guides, Audit Risk Alerts, and Checklists and Illustrative Financial Statements. These publications are utilized by practitioners in public practice, industry, and academia. Keira is also a project leader on the FASB Codification project. For this project she has worked on training materials and conducted trainings sessions.
Prior to the AICPA, Keira was a manager at Ernst & Young and worked in the New York, Raleigh, and Sydney, Australia offices. At Ernst & Young, she worked primarily in the Real Estate Assurance group. The majority of her experience was on a publicly traded mortgage real estate investment trust.
Ms. Lichtenstein is a licensed CPA in North Carolina and is a member of the North Carolina State Society of CPAs and the AICPA. She earned her bachelor’s degree in Accounting and Finance from the Stern School of Business at New York University.
Carol M. Clarke
Executive Director, Department of Professional Practice
KPMG LLP
Carol is an Executive Director in KPMG’s Department of Professional Practice (DPP) in New York. She has more than 25 years of experience in consulting about complex accounting issues and writing interpretive accounting guidance.
Professional and Industry Experience
Carol’s primary responsibility in DPP is managing content development for KPMG’s on-line accounting manual, including preparing for integration of the FASB Accounting Standards CodificationTM. Preparation for Codification includes rewriting the firm’s interpretive accounting guidance to align with the Codification structure, analyzing the effect on the firm’s systems, and developing firm-wide training.
Carol also publishes a weekly electronic newsletter for the firm’s audit professionals about audit, accounting, and selected tax matters.
Before joining KPMG LLP, Carol worked in public accounting and industry, and was a member of the FASB staff for 10 years.
Thomas White
Partner
Wilmerhale
Thomas White is a partner in the Corporate Practice Group. He joined the firm in 1979. Mr. White has practiced corporate and bankruptcy law at the firm since 1983. He is one of the firm’s leading practitioners in the area of corporate governance, and also has extensive experience representing corporate and institutional clients in complex business transactions.
Practice
Since passage of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act in 2002, Mr. White has developed a multi-disciplinary corporate governance practice. He has advised numerous Fortune 100, mid-cap, and small-cap companies and their boards and management on key issues under the Act, including internal control over financial reporting, attorney responsibility policies, director/officer loans, whistleblowers and auditor independence. He also advises clients and their boards and management on difficult corporate law, securities and accounting issues, and in conducting internal investigations.
Mr. White represents corporate clients in a wide range of transactions. These include both public and private merger transactions, bond and bank debt financing and securities offerings. Indicative of the types of complex transactions Mr. White has handled is the 1995 acquisition of West Publishing Company, the leading legal publisher, by Thomson Corporation, and the 1998 strategic restructuring of US Office Products, which involved a simultaneous equity investment, debt refinancing and self-tender offer, and spin-offs of four non-core businesses.
Mr. White also has substantial experience in corporate debt restructurings and the corporate and finance sides of chapter 11 proceedings. He has represented clients in out-of-court debt restructurings as well as chapter 11 DIP financing, asset sales, reorganization plans and post-reorganization financing.
Recent Highlights
Mr. White is corporate and securities counsel for a Houston oilfield services company. Mr. White and WilmerHale helped this company successfully navigate a difficult multi-year financial reporting process, which included restating prior year financial statements, bringing the company current in its public SEC filings and obtaining relisting on the New York Stock Exchange, advising with respect to management separation issues, and responding to government investigations. Mr. White also provides ongoing advice to the Board on corporate governance matters.
Mr. White’s recent transactions include representing a major consulting firm in the acquisition of a DC-based economic consulting firm and representing a leading provider of optimization software solutions to the electric power industry in acquiring another company in that industry.
Mr. White and a team of the firm's corporate and tax lawyers assisted the low- and moderate-income tenants of a DC apartment complex in exercising their rights under DC law to purchase their buildings and a subsequent financing transaction which successfully transferred the buildings to new owners while preserving the tenants’ occupancy rights.
Chad Kokenge
Transaction Services Partner
PriceWaterhouseCoopers
Chad Kokenge is a leading authority on complex accounting matters. He advises companies across many areas, including equity-based compensation, business combinations, and revenue recognition. Chad completed two years as a Professional Accounting Fellow in the Office of the Chief Accountant at the SEC, where he consulted with registrants on a variety of challenging accounting issues and helped to oversee private sector standard-setting efforts. Active on the professional front, Chad serves as co-chairperson of the AICPA's task force on the valuation of private equity securities.
Chad is currently a Transaction Services partner in the Accounting and Financial Reporting (AFR) practice of PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP (PwC). Prior to joining Transaction Services, Chad spent four years as a partner in PwC's National Office. While in National, Chad represented PwC in many forums and was a consultant in the U.S. and Global Accounting Consulting Services practices, where he helped engagement teams and clients work through U.S. GAAP and IFRS matters.
In demand as a writer and speaker on complex financial reporting matters, Chad has addressed numerous audiences and authored PwC's interpretive guidance on equity-based compensation and business combinations, among other topics. While at the SEC, Chad co-authored Staff Accounting Bulletin No. 107, which addresses equity-based compensation. He also sat as the SEC staff observer in several groups, including the AICPA’s original task force on the valuation of private equity securities, the FASB’s options valuation group, and the EITF's working group on discontinued operations.
Chad started his career at PwC's practice office in Dallas, where he managed accounts across a broad array of industries, including manufacturing, distribution, services, and media. Many of his clients were public and/or private equity-backed companies and active in mergers and acquisitions.
Chad holds a master in professional accounting from the University of Texas at Austin. He also received from the University of Iowa a bachelor's degree in business administration in finance, with a minor in mathematical sciences. He is a licensed CPA in Texas, New Jersey, and New York and is a member of the AICPA.
FASB Accounting Standards Codification: Understanding the New System
Speaker Firms:
American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA)
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