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Majority of businesses are either renting or leasing property. Lease implies a contract to use the property belonging to another party over a period of time for a specified payment. Leasing is mainly a financing medium used by a lessee to possess and use property and equipment as the cash outflow is made over the lease term. Leasing, in effect, allows companies to use their cash to finance their operations, instead of tying such funds up in the purchase of property and equipment. Moreover, leasing allows companies to avoid the issue of obsolescence and to some degree, its maintenance.

Imagine if majority of the working population are part owners of the company where they work. Imagine the enthusiasm and excitement this possibility can infuse into the workplace! Aside from an increase in productivity as a result of employees’ awareness of their share in the company’s profit, employee retention may also remain high and result in a stable succession. Employee ownership can be accomplished in a variety of ways: employees can buy shares of stock directly from the company, receive stock options at a specified exercise price, obtain shares through a profit-sharing plan, or this could be awarded as a bonus. Of these avenues, the employee stock option plan (ESOP) is, perhaps, the least popular route to increasing employee ownership. ESOP is a kind of employee benefit plan, similar in some ways to a profit-sharing plan. In an ESOP, a company sets up a trust fund, into which it contributes new shares of its own stock or cash to buy existing shares.

It is a common practice among Filipinos to consult a doctor or go to the hospital only when the disease has reached a serious stage. This sometimes puts the patient at risk of being diagnosed only when the illness already requires intensive care, or worse, when it is too late to save the patient’s life.

The year 2016 will be a period in history when we see the changing of the guards. We should be ready for the new administration at the end of next month. And in a parallel world of corporate finance, the listed or public companies in the country shall witness changes in their Independent Directors (IDs) if they start implementing the new rules regarding these officials. In December 2011, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) issued Memorandum Circular (MC) 9, which, among others, limits the term of the independent directors to a total of 10 years, with two years of a “cooling-off” period between two terms of five consecutive years for listed, public and mutual fund companies. As 2016 is the fifth year of effectivity for the Circular, we should start seeing its implementation in the coming months.

Going through audited financial statements nowadays is like reading through a long technical paper. It has become more difficult for management to prepare, more cumbersome for auditors to audit, and more complicated for users to understand for their management and investment decisions.

McKinsey & Company, a worldwide management consulting firm that conducts qualitative and quantitative analyses in order to help businesses evaluate management decisions, found that an unhappy customer tells between 9 and 15 people about his or her experience. In fact, 13 percent of unhappy customers tell more than 20 people about their experience. The challenge for us then is: how do you get the pulse of your customers before they tell others about their bad experience? The common method used to measure such pulse is usually the client satisfaction survey (CSS). But how effective are these surveys, especially for professional services firms?

How should a company go about choosing an external auditor? What factors must it consider in deciding whether a CPA would be able to perform a good audit? The answer to these questions depends on the value that management and the other users place on the audited financial statements. Is audit just needed for regulatory compliance and submission to government agencies? Is it obtained because banks and creditors require it? At face value, these maybe the obvious reasons why businesses undergo an audit. However, good governance and best practices on financial management requires for a good audit to be performed as it attests to the fairness of the information contained in the financial statements and disclosures issued by the company.

As an employer, do you know that your obligation goes beyond remitting your employees’ (plus the employer’s) statutory contributions to various government agencies such as the Social Security System (SSS), Philippine Health Insurance Corp. (PhilHealth) and Home Development and Mutual Fund (HDMF)?