Authors contributing to the April 2012 issue
Lewis J. Altfest, CPA/PFS, Ph.D., CFA, CFP, is CEO and chief investment officer for Altfest Personal Wealth Management in New York City and an associate professor of finance at Pace University. Prior to founding the firm in 1983, he was a general partner and director of research for Lord, Abbett & Co., a major mutual fund and investment management company. He is a pioneer in financial planning and wealth management who has received the Charles R. Schwab IMPACT Award, one of the profession’s highest honors. He has been named one of the best financial advisers in the country by Barron’s, Money, Worth, Mutual Funds and Medical Economics magazines.
Walter M. Primoff, CPA/PFS, heads the Professional Advisor Group at Altfest Personal Wealth Management in New York City. He coordinates with clients’ adviser teams, and their CPAs and attorneys, to help clients achieve planning goals and minimize investment taxation. He also specializes in the advanced use of charitable and other financial planning techniques to help donors achieve financial and nonfinancial life goals through innovative philanthropy. He is the past deputy executive director of the N.Y. State Society of CPAs, where he ran its CPA practice and professional issues programs.
Joel Sinkin is president of Transition Advisors LLC in New York City. The firm exclusively consults on ownership transition for public accounting firms, providing advice on succession planning, mergers and acquisitions, and partnership agreement issues. He has been involved with and consulted on hundreds of successful closings of accounting firm mergers and acquisitions over the past 20 years, has taught CPE courses for state and national accounting associations around the country, and has published books and articles nationally. He also is an editorial adviser to the AICPA newsletter Small Firm Solutions.
Terrence Putney, CPA, is CEO of Transition Advisors LLC. In that role, he has been involved with and consulted on hundreds of accounting firm mergers and acquisitions and also has consulted on succession plan strategies for partners of firms. He has more than 30 years’ experience in the CPA profession, including as a managing director of mergers and acquisitions for one of the largest national accounting firms.
Stephen Bartoletti, MBA, is a senior banking adviser and trainer with a career spanning more than 30 years: 17 years in commercial banking with extensive experience in management and commercial lending for small and medium-size enterprises (SMEs), followed by 15 years in development banking as a project manager and supervisor under contract to the World Bank and European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. In that capacity, he supervised hundreds of millions of dollars in SME loans granted through more than 50 institutions in Eastern Europe and Central Asia, including the $300 million Enterprise Support Project in Russia. He is currently advising a commercial bank in Vietnam on its small- and medium-enterprise lending program.
Randal A. Wolverton, CPA/CFF, CFE, is a retired FBI special agent who served for 28 years in the Kansas City, Louisville, Ky., and Philadelphia divisions, and at FBI headquarters in Washington. His assignments included white collar crime, violent crime, organized crime, domestic terrorism and public corruption cases. He currently provides forfeiture investigation and forensic accounting services as a sole practitioner, serves on the AICPA’s Certified in Financial Forensics (CFF) Credential Committee and the AICPA’s Fraud Task Force, and provides instruction on forensic accounting to a variety of business and professional organizations.
Wei-Chih Chiang, DBA, is an assistant professor of accounting at the University of Houston–Victoria in Victoria, Texas. He received his doctorate from Louisiana Tech University. His research interests include tax and financial accounting.
Randy Reed, DBA, is an assistant professor of accounting at the University of Houston–Victoria in Victoria, Texas. He received his doctorate from Louisiana Tech University. His primary research interests are in auditing and systems. He currently serves on the editorial review board for the International Journal of Global Management Studies.
Larry Maples, CPA, DBA, is a professor of accounting at Tennessee State University in Nashville, Tenn. He has written frequently for the JofA, including (with Sandy Johns) “Advising Clients in Same-Sex Relationships,” Dec. 2011, page 48; (with Mark Turner and Beth Howard) “Tax Considerations for Buying and Selling Property With a Burdensome Lease,” April 2009, page 51; and “Tax Treatment of Rebates May Be Clearing Up,” Oct. 2008, page 42.
Robert D. Hayes, CPA, Ph.D., ChFC, CMA, is an adjunct retired professor at Tennessee State University in Nashville, Tenn., who has written extensively on taxation, financial accounting and other topics. His other recently published articles include (with Kenneth W. Holloman) “Death Taxes in Tennessee: They’re Not Just for the Rich Anymore” in the Jan./Feb. 2012 issue of the Tennessee CPA Journal and (with Eva K. Jermakowicz) “Framework-Based Teaching of IFRS: The Case of Deutsche Bank” in the August 2011 issue of Accounting Education: An International Journal.
