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AIA CFO Council Meets for First Time

Undersecretary of Defense (Comptroller) Robert F. Hale led off AIA’s first Chief Financial Officers Council meeting May 24. Held in conjunction with the AIA Board of Governors meeting in Williamsburg, Va., the CFO Council meeting featured a heavy roster of speakers and more than 20 industry participants.

Dr. Elizabeth Robinson, chief financial officer of NASA, and Carl Burrus, acting director of budget for the FAA, also made presentations to the council. All three speakers discussed current budgets, the effect the deficit is having on their long-term budget projections and the difficulty of prioritizing programs in the current environment. In addition, the meeting featured Kenny Bement, program manager for the Revenue Recognition Convergence project of the Financial Accounting Standards Board. Bement’s discussion of proposed standards generated a lively discussion with the audience.

The final sessions of the day featured panels that dealt with the current accounting and tax issues facing industry. On the first panel, aerospace and defense leads from KPMG, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Ernst & Young and Deloitte addressed the current status of International Financial Reporting Standards convergence, Securities and Exchange Commission Comment Letter trends, a Government Accountability Office study of internal audit effectiveness and Defense Contract Audit Agency practices. The second panel discussed a pair of tax issues facing the business community: the Zadroga Act, a new excise tax imposed on federal payments to foreign persons, and the three percent withholding implementation, which has been delayed until Jan. 1, 2013.

The CFO Council was established to provide an authoritative source for the coordinated opinion of the member companies of AIA, and to address issues such as U.S. Generally Accepted Accounting Principles, International Financial Reporting Standards, SEC and other financial and accounting related issues confronting the aerospace industry. Members of the CFO Council who attended were pleased with the meeting and recognized that more work needs to be done to identify the issues that the Council will consider as it goes forward.

AIA Source: Terry.Marcinko[at]aia-aerospace.org