Letter From the Editor

Date01 January 2015
DOIhttp://doi.org/10.1002/jcaf.22012
Published date01 January 2015
AuthorBarry J. Brinker
1
© 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Published online in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com).
DOI 10.1002/jcaf.22012
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Dear JCAF Reader,
This is the last issue of
Journal of Corporate Account-
ing & Finance planned by
longtime editor Edward J. (Ed)
Stone, who was managing edi-
tor of this journal for about 20
years. On behalf of all the staff
and contributors, I’d like to
thank him for his editorial abili-
ties and organizational genius.
Since I’ve edited cost manage-
ment articles for this journal for
almost 15 years and a new editor
hasn’t been named (as of the
date of this writing), I’ve agreed
to try stepping into Ed’s shoes
for this issue.
THEMES AND SUBTHEMES
Although the theme of this
issue is mergers and acquisi-
tions (M&As), it offers several
subthemes, including initial
public offerings (IPOs) such as
the record-breaking IPO for
Alibaba in September 2014,
litigation costs (the ongoing BP
settlement), and bitcoins. The
financial reporting issues posed
by bitcoins and similar forms of
“digital currency,” for example,
are discussed in the article
Accounting Issues Related to
Bitcoins” by Cecily Raiborn and
Marcos Sivitanides, while the
tax issues are discussed in the
tax column “Final Thoughts
From the Taxpayer Advocate’s
Report to Congress” by Caroline
D. Strobel.
MERGERS AND ACQUISITIONS
The mergers and acquisi-
tions articles in this issue discuss
several issues. James Edwards’s
article, for example (“M&A
Deal-Makers Are Dealing in
2014: A Commentary”), dis-
cusses the comeback of M&A
deals in 2014 and the reporting
problems posed by Bitcoin. He
also lays out the issues concern-
ing “corporate tax inversions,”
which the Treasury moved to
restrict in September 2014.
The article by Laurent Bou-
vier and Tahir M. Nisar (“Disci-
plining Management or Guiding
Management: Aligning Interests
in Securitized Leveraged Buy-
outs”) discusses how a securi-
tized LBO can be structured
as a new strategy for private
equity acquisitions. The intent
of a securitized LBO is to link
various management strategies
and actions toward achieving at
least a minimum level of perfor-
mance—in part, by disciplining
the company’s management
through constraining the “waste-
ful” use of free cash flows.
The article by Marlin R.
H. Jensen, Beverly B. Marshall,
and John S. Jahera Jr. (“JOBS
Act: Has It Brought Back the
IPO?”) discusses the plummet-
ing number of IPOs after the
2008 recession and the effort to
remedy that by passage in 2012
of the Jumpstart Our Business
Startups (JOBS) Act, whose
purpose was to improve access
to public capital markets by
alleviating or eliminating restric-
tions on emerging growth com-
panies going public through an
IPO. The article also addresses
whether global firms have reen-
tered the U.S. market using dual-
class shares in IPOs to maintain
control of the firms they have
created.
Finally, the article “Assess-
ing Corporate Governance
in M&As” by David Shapiro
discusses the importance of
assessing the leadership of an
M&A target. The author argues
that more than accounting and
financial issues are at stake:
M&As should be considered pri-
marily as a privately controlled
reordering of economic, finan-
cial, and human resources.
COLUMNS
With this issue, we’d like
to welcome Donald Walker as
L etter From the Editor

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