Accenture to Co-Publish Stern Stewart’s Journal of Applied Corporate Finance
NEW YORK, April 15, 2003 – Stern Stewart & Co. today announced that Accenture (NYSE: ACN) has become the co-publisher of the Journal of Applied Corporate Finance (JACF), Stern Stewart’s quarterly publication for corporate managers devoted to the practical application of the best current research in finance.
Mary Tolan, chief executive of Accenture’s Resources Group, will join the publication’s editorial board. She sees Accenture’s affiliation with the JACF (“the Journal”) as a reflection of Accenture’s ongoing commitment to delivering innovation and value to clients.
“The Journal is a well-established platform to involve senior executive leaders in a dialogue about ideas that are directly relevant to increasing corporate performance and shareholder value,” said Tolan. “The Journal’s underlying theme – which is the potential for financial management to add value – will be enhanced by Accenture’s insights and experiences in helping deliver innovation to clients through technology, strategy, alliances and outsourcing,” Tolan said.
Bennett Stewart, co-founder of Stern Stewart and another of the Journal’s executive editors, said, “Accenture’s experience and reach, together with its reputation for helping clients create value through innovative consulting services, will help us do an even better job of carrying out the Journal’s mission.”
The Winter 2003 issue, available now, is the first co-published with Accenture. It focuses on the expanding ways corporations are using the “real options” method of valuing strategic investments. Real options are valuable sources of flexibility that are often built into corporate assets and activities, such as the right of a mining company to reopen a closed copper mine; of a biotech firm to develop a new vaccine in the early stages of research and development; and of a film studio to turn scripts into movies and harvest the value of film “libraries.” A series of articles demonstrates the use of real options as a valuation tool in each of these cases.
Other articles in the Winter 2003 issue show how the real options method can be used not just to value, but also to manage, strategic investments. For example, in “Turning Risk into Shareholder Wealth in the Petroleum Industry,” Raoul LeBlanc of Anadarko Petroleum Corp. teams up with Craig Heiser, an Accenture partner, and John McCormack of Stern Stewart, to discuss how Anadarko uses real-options principles to guide its strategy for developing proven oil reserves. In a related article, Alex Triantis, a real-options expert at the University of Maryland, joins software consultant Blake Johnson and Hewlett-Packard’s Corey Billington to describe how real-options techniques can be used to manage uncertainty in high-tech supply chains.
The Spring 2003 issue will highlight topical corporate governance issues, with articles on the current state of U.S. corporate governance; the design of equity-based incentive pay systems; problems with GAAP accounting (and how to remedy them); value-adding corporate acquisition policies; a new development in energy master limited partnerships; and the market impact of CalPERS’ Focus List. The Spring issue will also bring together practitioners and academics in a roundtable discussion of integrity in financial reporting.
"Like Accenture, the JACF sees the finance function as providing key oversight and business operations support to maximize shareholder value," said Mike Sutcliff, managing partner, Finance & Performance Management, Accenture, and member of the JACF board of advisors. "I look forward to working with the JACF’s distinguished editors and contributors."
The Journal of Applied Corporate Finance has been published for more than 20 years and its contributors are some of the most distinguished names in corporate finance scholarship and business practice. Regularly recurring topics include capital structure and financing vehicles, corporate strategy and valuation, risk management, performance measurement, and incentive compensation. For further information, contact Don Chew, editor-in-chief, at dchew@sternstewart.com.
About Accenture
Accenture is the world’s leading management consulting and technology services company. Committed to delivering innovation, Accenture collaborates with its clients to help them realize their visions and create tangible value. With deep industry expertise, broad global resources and proven experience in consulting and outsourcing, Accenture can mobilize the right people, skills, alliances and technologies. With more than 75,000 people in 47 countries, the company generated net revenues of $11.6 billion for the fiscal year ended August 31, 2002. Its home page is www.accenture.com.
About Stern Stewart
Stern Stewart is a global management consulting firm headquartered in New York City that specializes in the management and incentive applications of economic profit under its trademarked name of EVA (economic value added).
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Don Chew
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Allen Valahu
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