The goods on going public

They're the entrepreneurs we love to hate: young upstarts who launch a dot-com, take it public with a listing on a US stock exchange and cruise into early retirement. But according to a recent PricewaterhouseCoopers survey on Canadian Initial Public Offerings, that scenario doesn't reflect reality.

Contrary to the perception that Canadian companies are drawn to the larger US capital markets, very few took their IPOs south of the border. Only two Canadian companies, Delano Technology and Talisman Enterprises, listed exclusively on the NASDAQ in 2000, while eight companies listed on both the NASDAQ and the TSE.

And with all the talk of the almighty dot-com, only five of the 101 IPOs in 2000 fell into that category, raising a modest $41.9 million. The 24 IPOs in the financial services sector, on the other hand, accounted for $3.7 billion - more than half of the total value of all offerings for the year ($6.8 billion).

The survey, which ranked IPO activity in nine sectors, listed Sun Life Financial Services as the year's largest issue at $1.8 billion. Technology & Media was the second most lucrative sector, raising $2.7 billion, but was the most active with 35 new issues. Mining was the third most active sector with 20 IPOs.

According to Eric Slavens, PricewaterhouseCoopers' IPO Services leader, there's a difference between the perception of NASDAQ as an attractive destination for Canadian companies looking to issue shares, and the reality of taking a company public in the US.

"There are a number of significant regulatory hurdles and cost considerations for any company thinking of listing there," he says. "In addition, the Toronto Stock Exchange is becoming more sensitive to the needs of technology companies with a new Technology listing classification."

While 2000 outpaced 1999 both in number and value of initial public offerings, market turmoil reduced the overall value of IPOs in the second half of the year.

"This is a testament to the need for speed - the window of opportunity opens and closes very quickly," says Slavens. "An important component for any IPO today is being ready when the market is receptive."

John Sapsford

Recruiting with the best
Illustrator: Cathy Pentland

In the corporate world, gaining a competitive advantage is the perpetual name of the game. Now, online recruiting for human capital is another means to that end. According to a recent study by Quebec-based consulting practice Recruitsoft/iLogos Research, the financial sector has been making good use of online technology to gain that all-important advantage when it comes to hiring.

The study, Best Practices for Fortune 500 Career Web Site Recruiting, which surveyed 485 companies across Canada and the United States, shows that the Fortune 500 financial sector makes better online re-cruiting efforts than the larger group of Fortune 500 companies. In some cases, the sector was surpassed only by the maestros of the Internet themselves: high-tech companies.

"It's no surprise that an industry so reliant upon employees with specialized skills would be a leader in this area," says Yves Lermusiaux, founder of iLogos Research. With the number of college graduates growing at less than 2%, and the number of 30- to 50-year-olds in the workforce decreasing each year, companies have to really work to attract the best individuals, he says.

How exactly are they doing it? By using their web sites wisely. "The corporate web site is a vital projection of the corporate image and a key communication platform," says Lermusiaux. "The career section is quickly becoming the first and most valuable point of contact between candidates and companies."

Ninety-five percent of the Fortune 500 financial-services companies have a separate career page on their web sites, and more than half of them include key areas on college recruiting (57%), benefits information (68%) and corporate culture information (58%).

The survey also indicates that other best practices for the career section of a corporate web site include a job search section by category, location and keyword; customized pre-assessment tools; online user feedback; profiling and anonymous application.

The dominant theme of recruiting over the Internet for the next decade will be cultivating human capital, says Lermusiaux. "The Internet is at the core of 21st-century recruiting and companies must ensure that their practices are aligned with technological capabilities that support and help achieve corporate goals."

Anna Maria Greene

So, what do you do for a living?

What's in a name? Or, in today's workplace, a better line might be, "What's in a title?" A new breed of jobs has brought innovative work titles to match. And it's even happening in upper management, from the now-commonplace Chief Information Officer to new monikers such as Chief Growth Officer.

Rod McKay, a CA and partner at KPMG, plays one of these title roles: he's the firm's global Chief Knowledge Officer (CKO). It's an offshoot of his other role as KPMG Canada's Chief Technology Officer, he says, and the main duties are to facilitate knowledge sharing within the firm.

"When you work on one assignment, you should be able to use that knowledge and experience on another assignment, moving it from one project to another, one individual to another," says McKay, a Calgarian who now works primarily out of Boston.

The CKO's function is wholly internal: his job is to enable other employees to transfer the skills and knowledge learned from one client engagement to the next. "It is not something that is on the radar screen of the client," he adds.

Other companies, however, will proudly brandish their uniqueness with the craziest of titles for staff. Take Toronto-based Internet incubator NRG Group Inc., which has even encouraged employees to make up their own. The result: anything from Chief Passion Architect to New Media Concierge to Dot-Com Midwife. Cool, maybe, but do intriguing job titles help business? The practice has its critics.

"Look at a title like New Media Concierge," says Ann Eby, an independent job trends specialist. "Nobody knows what that means. People will always be asking, 'Well what do you do?' So you're always in this position of trying to explain to people what you do."

By any other name, would a title be as important? Maybe, says Jack Penaligon, a partner at Caldwell Partners International, an executive search firm based in Toronto. He points to a recent Caldwell search for a Chief Growth Officer. As he explains it, the job is really a chief administrative position, but requires extra marketing savvy. "Sometimes you need someone with a skill set above and beyond, and the title has to reflect that," says Penaligon. "We also wanted to show that this business was growing."

John Shoesmith

Firms commit to global quality standard

As business and commerce continue to go global, the need for consistent and comparable financial information becomes paramount.

With the hope of ensuring high-quality auditing practices worldwide, 23 international accounting firms joined forces in London, England, last January at a meeting sponsored by the International Federation of Accountants.

Known as IFAC's Forum of Firms, the group's aim is to protect cross-border investors and other economic decision-makers, as well as promote market stability, through the development of a Global Quality standard for firms conducting transnational audits.

The forum's Global Quality Standard is likely to require:

• audit policies and methodology for conducting transnational audits in accordance with International Standards of Auditing;
• compliance with the IFAC code of ethics;
• training programs to keep partners and staff up to date on international developments in financial reporting;
• quality control standards and regular quality assurance reviews to monitor compliance with the firm's policies and methodology.
  

The forum, which is currently operating on a provisional basis, is part of an ongoing program to restructure and strengthen IFAC.

"The launch of the Forum of Firms is another significant step in implementing the plan that the International Federation of Accountants adopted last year to strengthen its role as the global standard-setting, self-regulatory and representational body for the profession's audit and assurance-related services," says Tsuguoki (Aki) Fujinuma, president of IFAC. "Commitment to the obligations of membership in the forum will raise the standards of the international practice of auditing and will also strongly serve the interests of the users of the profession's services."

Membership in the new forum is open to any firm that has, or is interested in accepting, transnational audit appointments, provided that it agrees to subject its assurance work to periodic external quality assurance reviews and that it will conform to the Forum of Firm's Global Quality Standard.

The inside scoop on inpatriates

We'd like to think that when companies in the US want to hire high-level employees from other countries, they would look to Canada first. We're just next door, after all, and we watch all that US television so, culturally, we're closer to the Yanks than to the Asians or Europeans. A recent survey by Runzheimer International, however, tells a different story.

When the global management consulting firm asked 39 US human resource executives about their foreign recruitment practices, they said most employees recruited into the United States come not from Canada, but from Europe. In fact, Canada ranks fourth, behind the region encompassing Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean, and it's only a few spots ahead of Africa and the Middle East. So while the media often give the impression of a huge river of Canadian talent draining away to the US, the view in the States may be very different: they may see no more than a tiny trickle.

According to the study, most inpatriates (people transferring to the US from other countries) are 35 to 50 years old, male, and from Europe or Asia. They are most often hired for professional or technical jobs, followed by executive/ management positions. They're most often on assignment for one to three years; afterward, they usually return home.

More than half of the HR executives expect that, over the next five years, inpatriates will be filling areas in which skills are lacking. They said companies that bring in foreign employees face three main challenges: obtaining visa approvals; developing a true foreign service program; and getting employees to return home after their service is over.

So why do US firms prefer Asians and Europeans to Canadians? Robert Zanussi, a senior consultant at Runzheimer's national office in Toronto, says it's hard to tell. But he speculates that the gap between Canada and Europe may not be as wide as the survey suggests. For starters, Europe's population is much larger than Canada's. In addition, he says there is "a possibility that the US firms contacted ... may not see Canada as necessarily foreign." Now, there's a comforting thought.

Okey Chigbo















John Sapsford