Lately, I looked up relevant information about International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS), because I am an international student and I want to know more about global issues about accounting. Plus, after a few years later, perhaps I will go back to my hometown China to continue work in this field. And at the time I am looking for some articles introducing IFRS, I found a new term “fair-value” which intrigued me to learn more about it. Then I found there are some critics argue that fair-value accounting exacerbated the severity of the 2008 financial crisis. And I found a journal where the authors Laux and Leuz (2010) believe that the claim that fair-value accounting exacerbated the crisis is largely unfounded.

They begin their analysis by explaining in more detail how pure mark-to-market accounting can cause problems in a crisis. Then they outline extant accounting rules for banks’ key assets. After the background information on how fair-value accounting actually works, they examine possible mechanisms through which fair-value accounting could have contributed to the financial crisis. Based on their analysis and an extensive review of the empirical evidence to date, they think it is unlikely that fair-value accounting contributed to the severity of the financial crisis in a major way, either by increasing banks’ leverage in the boom or by substantially amplifying banks’ problems in the downturn.

From my perspective, their conclusion that fair-value accounting caused the exacerbation of financial crisis can be generally acknowledged based on their researches and reasoning. I deem it is reasonable to deny the influence of fair-value accounting was a major cause of the U.S.’ banks problems in the financial crisis in a major way. Nevertheless, more research is necessary to understand the effects in fair-value accounting in booms and busts to guide efforts to reform the rules.

As a students who wants to engage in the field of accounting in the future career, I am very interested about Merger and Acquisitions (M&A) issues for companies. Apparently, to decide whether the company will take part in M&A, the decision-maker of the company first is supposed to consider about the profits M&A brings. And then the company can decide what kind of means they will adopt in the procedures of M&A.

In the article, the author Bruner (2001) utilizes several main means or categories of analyzing. First, he analyzes the measurement of M&A profitability in different ways of study, such as event studies, accounting studies, surveys of executives, and clinical studies, and he summarizes the approach, strengths, and weaknesses of each research method.  Then, he analyzes the market-based returns to shareholders including returns to target firms, to buyer firms, and to both buyer and target firms. Besides, he talks about findings based on the analysis of reported financial performance, findings about the drivers of profitability, findings from surveys of executives, findings from clinical studies, and conclusions of reviewers through time.

Based on the mass of research, Bruner conclusively suggests the business practitioner to be coldly realistic about the benefits of acquisition and I tend to support his statements. He states the necessity of carefully structuring deals, of particularly avoiding overpaying. Plus, he encourages the people to work very hard to achieve the economic gains they hypothesized and to take nothing for granted. I fully agree with what he emphasizes finally that M&A is no money machine, and may well not offer the major career-building event people wanted. In a word, it’s a really complicated process to analyze the pros and cons of M&A comprehensively. Also, it’s a really hard task for the manager of a company to make decisions about whether to take part in M&A. The manager needs to consider issues comprehensively and make scientific and systematic decisions.

In 2010, when I was 12 years old, I was invited to attend the annual party of my mother’s company at the time. At the party, her boss announced that my mother was promoted as a CFO and praised my mother for her great achievements and contributions for the company. She successfully found an account value of 30 million RMB that should be paid doubly booking in Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) because of the replacement of new ERP, which helped the company avoided of paying for the extra account. As a little kid, I was shocked, because 30 million RMB was really big amount in my mind at that time. So, I was really proud of my mother and also realized the importance of accounting work. From then on, I really want to be an accountant just like my mother.

When I grew up, I gradually knew that many people, like myself, also wants to study accounting. How to compete with so many people came to my mind. How my mother became a CFO? I asked my mother, and my mother smiled and said: “There is neither lowliness nor nobleness in careers. A CFO stands for more responsibilities. Rome was not built in a day. I first had to be a cashier, a stock accountant, a costing supervisor, a finance manager, an internal auditor, and then finally a CFO. To be a CFO requires a lot of abilities such as professional qualification, good leadership, effective communication, problems solving. A CFO never stops learning to keep up with the times and needs to work much harder than others. The most important is that a CFO must find ways to maximize the value of a company.”

I remembered my mother ever read CMA books at midnight and did continuous overtime work for six months for ERP implementation. After listening to her words, I realized that there isn’t shortcut; A CFO is poured with more sweat.

Besides, I heard about the cases from my mother about how Nestle maximized great value through global M & A and how fast Alibaba created big value through IPO activity in the New York Stock Exchange. And especially after my mother telling me about the case that hundreds of millions of RMB tax was saved in the sale of shares of one local listed company because of a good organizational structure designed by the CFO, I was lost in admiration. A CFO can create so great value for  the company, and I really want to be such a CFO. Hence, I need to major in accounting in college and first get to the field after graduation, and at that time I can be closer and closer to my goal of becoming a successful CFO.