Thought leadership stories

Recent rhetoric has emerged alleging that U.S. banks aren’t allowed to do business in Canada, which is untrue. U.S. banks have been operating in Canadafor well over a century with 16 U.S.-based bank subsidiaries and branches managing $113 billion in assets here in the country.

James Thompson, SAF professor and co-director of the Computing and Financial Management program, breaks down how U.S. banks operate in Canada—challenging misconceptions and offering key insights on cross-border banking.

Researcher from the School of Accounting and Finance cautions that clear regulatory oversight is needed to protect investors.

The topic of sustainability is becoming increasingly popular in the investment world with sustainable investing creating a large global impact. This significant shift lead the School of Accounting and Finance's (SAF)Dr. Adam Vitalisand his co-authors to research how green labels attract investors to certain projects which can open the door to greenwashing.

November marked a significant milestone in sustainability education as the University of ݮƵ hosted the inaugural "Be the Future" conference for high school students, organized by the School of Accounting and Finance (SAF), the Faculty of Environment and Ontario DECA.

This unique event highlighted ݮƵ's commitment to developing the next generation of leaders by inspiring students to explore the intersection of sustainability, social impact and economic growth.

ǰ, the University of ݮƵ is spotlighting some incredible entrepreneurs making a difference for humanity and our world.

School of Accounting and Finance (SAF) alum Jade Choy (BAFM ’17) co-foundedalongside her brother Keith Choy (BAFM ’16, MAcc ’16) and close friend Michael Miller. Like many of her Accounting and Finance peers at ݮƵ, Choy was on a more traditional career path — aiming for a future in management consulting. However, a side project related to non-profit work sparked a much larger idea, one that would eventually evolve into Epoch.

Chen is the very deserving 2024 School of Accounting and Finance (SAF) valedictorian of 2024. She is completing her degree on the Dean’s Honours List and is graduating with a Bachelor of Accounting and Financial Management (AFM, with both a Professional Accountant Specialization and Financial Leadership Specialization. She is currently pursuing her Master of Accounting degree, with a convocation in 2025.

The Contemporary Issues in Sustainability Reporting Symposium,co-organized by Professors Liz Demers and Mingyue Zhang on behalf of the CPA Ontario Centre for Sustainability and Performance Management (CSPM), brought together thought leaders from academia and business to explore and discuss contemporary issues in sustainability reporting.

What is sustainability? Is it a trend, a buzz word or a real solution to many of the climate, economic and social issues we’re facing today?

With our inaugural Hub for Sustainability Integration Conference coming up next month, we sat down with expertJennifer Roedding to help paint a clearer picture of how leaders can integrate sustainability into their businesses and see larger profits in the long run.

The School of Accounting and Finance (SAF)recentlycaught up withGraceZhou (MAcc‘18) to chat about her career post-graduation andtogaininsight into theexcitingopportunitiesthatSAFco-optermscanprovidetoenrichٳܻԳٲ’professional experiences.

Professor Cody Buchenauer (CPA, CA, MAcc ’14) is a School of Accounting and Finance (SAF) alum with a remarkable career journey. From a student navigating through co-op terms to an industry professional holding a role as senior manager at EY, Buchenauer is now a full-time faculty member as well as a member of SAF’s co-op and experiential learning team. Bridging academia and industry to guide current ٳܻԳٲ’ career paths as a passionate educator, his journey is a testament to the impact of the co-op experience offered at SAF.

New research shows that team-based recognition can be effective in settings where performance is highly interdependent, and teamwork is essential to the company’s success.

With the fall term fast approaching, the School of Accounting and Finance (SAF) is excited to welcome the incoming Class of 2028. There is a lot of preparation involved as students get ready for their first year of university. To help with this transition, a team of faculty members at SAF have created a series of modules to get students familiar with the technology requirements for SAF, as well as basic accounting and finance concepts.

In the digital age, a new Twitter strategy can have implications for a healthy bottom line. How companies handle customer complaints on social media plays a critical role in their customer-focused performance management systems. However, there has been a notable lack of descriptive information related to assessing managerial performance based on the handling of online complaints.

Based on the emerging technology, this paper proposes a new method to measure the expected duration of competitive advantage for average adopters. This method is based on public data, such as google searches, press releases, book titles, and companies’ disclosures with respect to the technology. The method is very easy to implement.

The School of Accounting and Finance (SAF) is pleased to share that Jillian Adams has been awarded the Warren Ober Award for Outstanding Teaching by a Graduate Student. This award is given to a University of ݮƵ graduate student in the Faculty of Arts who has made significant contributions to teaching.

Congratulations to School of Accounting and Finance professor Ranjini Jha, recipient of the 2023Arts Award for Excellence in Service!

Established in 2012 by then-dean Doug Peers, the Arts Awards for Excellence in Service, Teaching and Research recognize exceptional contributions made by faculty, staff, and students in the Faculty of Arts. This is the 11th anniversary of the Arts Awards and more than 30 members of the Arts community were nominated by their chairs, supervisors, and colleagues.

The School of Accounting and Finance (SAF) caught up with Andres Perez-Vilarino (MAcc ’19) to discuss his career post-graduation, and to learn how he has leveraged his education and passions to help inform his role.

More than 30 nominations submitted for the 2023 Arts Awards for Excellence in Service, Teaching, and Research posed an especiallytough challenge for members of the Arts Honours and Awards (AHA) committee this spring. So many outstanding members of theArts community inspired their chairs, supervisors, and colleagues to put names forward as nominees to recognize their contributions and achievements.Today, Dean Sheila Ager and the AHA committee are happy to share the results.

Wenqian Hu’s paper was awarded the Lazaridis Institute Prize for the best paper on accounting issues relevant to technology firms. The paper finds that an algorithm-generated bonus allocation scheme improves employee productivity, compared with human managers’ bonus allocation.

In fast-paced and often rapidly changing work environments, employers continue to seek new and improved ways to recognize employees in the workplace. However, new research from the University of ݮƵ suggests that public peer recognition may backfire by enabling comparisons among employees, and these comparisons may make some employees feel unfairly treated.

Krista Fiolleau, associate professor in the School of Accounting and Finance (SAF) has recently published a chapter titled “The professional responsibility of accountants as re-defined by the inclusion of the NOCLAR standard in the Code of Ethics” within the Research Handbook on Accounting Ethics alongside co-authors Pier-Luc Nappert from Université Laval and Linda Thorne from the Schulich School of Business. NOCLAR, an acronym meaning non-compliance with laws and regulations is discussed extensively throughout the chapter.

From becoming the first member of her family to graduate from university, Ranjini Jha now educates other students as a professor of finance at the University of ݮƵ.

Currently, Ho works as an associate in private equity at Brookfield Asset Management and he attributes the start of building his investor mindset to his experience at the University of ݮƵ with the Student Investment Fund (SIF). SIF gave him and other SAF students the unique opportunity to invest with real money and gethands-on-training in equity valuation and portfolio management with guidance from industry experts and faculty mentors. This taught him about value investing that he then applied to his co-op role as private equity analystat the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan and when competing in the CFA Institute Research Challenge.

Mingyue Zhang is anassistant professor of accounting at the School of Accounting and Finance at the University of ݮƵ.

She earned her PhD in Accounting from the University of Toronto (Rotman School of Management) and Master of Professional Accounting from Singapore Management University. She is also an affiliate of the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants.(ACCA)

by Alyana Versolatto

The School of Accounting and Finance (SAF) is pleased to share that professor Efrim Boritz was inducted this year into the Canadian Accounting Hall of Fame for his extraordinary contributions to the accounting profession. During Boritz’s illustrious 40-year career at the University of ݮƵ, he has been a prolific writer and researcher with 24 books and monographs to his credit and over 40 articles in refereed journals. His research involves investigating areas of professional practice in external auditing and internal auditing which rely on the exercise of professional judgment.

Cyber-attacks and data breaches are of great concern for data-sensitive organizations. These organizations are adept at safeguarding data but fail in safeguarding against cyber-attacks. Phishing is a semantic attack that deceives email users into clicking on the embedded link or attachment in an email. The goal could be to induce the email users to subsequently give away sensitive information, enable malware that can steal passwords, or install a backdoor into the user’s system and encrypt the users’ data. Phishing imposes a great risk on these organizations for two reasons. First, even a non-vital position in which employees likely perceive little cyber risk, if being attacked, could cause significant economic loss and litigations. Second, phishing emails could simultaneously reach most employees within an organization. Thus, strengthening the frontier of safeguarding against phishing is of vital importance.