Scary questions for CFOs

By wpcomimportuser1 | October 16, 2008 | +

The new issue of Jack Ciesielski’s Analyst’s Accounting Observer has a list of “20 Questions to Ask on Conference Calls.” He means quarterly earnings conference calls, and the questions are all related to the current financial and economic turmoil. You’ll have to pay Jack some big bucks if you want to know all 20, but the first two should be enough to give you an indication of what a changed (and suspicion-filled) financial world we now live in:

1. What is the firm’s accounting policy on credit card receivables–are they considered cash equivalents?

2. If credit card receivables are “cash”–who is the bank handling credit card receivables?

Related Topics: Economy & Policy

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I’m not sure if these questions are really important — unless you are an issuer of credit card ‘credit’, “credit card receivables” don’t stay on the books as receivables for very long.

Nor do I see the point of the second question for most firms — just as with payment by check, the money is recorded on ledgers as being received when the check is received (and if it doesn’t clear, another ledger entry is made.) “Processing” is portable, and can continue even if a bank defaults/goes into receivership.

The real question is what happens when the bank that is issuing credit card debt goes down — if Morgan/Chase or BAC or Citibank defaults, what happens to all of the transactions that have been “authorized” but whose cash transfers are incomplete? I assume that a default would mean that the credit cards themselves would be cancelled (how can a bank that goes into default issue more debt?)

My guess is that in most cases (thanks to Biden’s bankruptcy bill, which ‘secures’ unsecured credit card debt by mortgaging people’s futures) the firm that has the credit card receivable “in transit” will probably get their money in fairly short order, because its not the bank, its the person who used the credit card, who is ultimately responsible for the debt.

Or am I missing something here?
williambanzai7

Here’s one for today’s bank CFO. Its 8:00. What time is it?