The golden years

By Robert Colapinto

For some CAs, retirement means working in an exotic and dangerous Third World country that needs their special skills

The voice over the other end of the line was matter-of-fact but its deathly intent was clear: it would be a good idea if you withdrew from the project. Bob Parsons, a veteran PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) tax specialist, was in Almaty, the former capital of the defunct Soviet Republic of Kazakhstan, and was well into creating a new fiscal regime for the country while overseeing the privatization of its gold mines. “Clearly, some bent-nosed characters were kind of pissed at this new oversight,” Parsons laughs. Parsons decided to accept the mob’s offer. He knew of an eatery where the bill included an extra tax that protected it from being bombed by the Kazakh mafia. “Hell, I wanted to make it to retirement,” he explains. “Needless to say, I was on the next flight out.”

This was 1995, some seven years before Parsons would take his well-deserved golden retirement to an idyllic Indonesian retreat.

But like a growing number of senior CAs, Parsons has chosen to continue applying his specialized skills in any number of exotic (and dangerous) locales around the world. Whether for profit or as volunteer advisers, these “former” CAs have refused to be put out to pasture. Some retired CAs can be found practising on Bay Street, but many are attracted to the myriad challenges presented by assignments in the developing world.

Of course, crunching numbers rather than heads is more the speed for even the most hard-bitten of today’s globetrotting CAs. No one seeks out such compromising and deadly predicaments as Parsons’ chilling Kazakh consult. But in a 21st century rife with emerging nations desperate for a piece of the global economic pie, such scenarios may be increasingly difficult to avoid. 

“For most of us, the prevailing challenges in these foreign lands are less deadly and more a case of dealing with the inevitable clash of economic cultures,” says Ted Chiswell, 74, a former financial management specialist and general manager of the Manitoba Development Corporation. Chiswell has worked in Georgia, most recently as an audit trainer for an audit company that was just starting up. “To start,” he says, “trying to get in more than a three-hour day was near impossible. They did agree to work sometimes on holidays and weekends, but still for four hours at most. They seem to have been into many other things including running other audits. So you have to be sensitive to the culture, and not come off as a know-it-all Ugly Canadian.” But when he finally got to work developing an audit program for one of their clients, the veteran CA had a difficult time biting his tongue. He soon came to understand that it was common practice for managers and accountants to keep duplicate books. One set of books he saw was brazenly rendered in pencil. After several years of profit there was a substantial loss, which naturally raised a red flag, but the accountant blatantly refused to show him the books when asked. All this taxed his diplomatic abilities.

“A lot of this kind of work in foreign lands is just that, diplomacy, with the accounting stuff a distant second,” he explains. Yet, it is a situation that Chiswell finds fascinating. “It was so unlike my previous 46 years of experience in the profession; it’s so new and strange,” he laughs. “Here’s this fantastic opportunity to, first, hopefully set things right, but also to interact with a different culture, to learn, to absorb the experience.” So it was with bemusement that he watched the miffed flour mill accountant — whose salary was some $30 a month — roar off in a new car. He compares that sight to the rest of the populace driving around in soviet-era Ladas, “and you just shake your head,” he recalls. “It’s kind of different, a little more colourful than the day-to-day auditing I used to do for the province of Manitoba.”

Chiswell retired back in 1992, and without skipping a beat began traveling the world in 1993. With the Manitoba Institute’s audit manual in hand, which the institute kindly allowed him use, he could be found wrestling into submission management and accounting systems and audit procedures in Georgia. In warmer climates, he’d be immersed in the complexities of computerizing the southern African Kingdom of Lesotho’s tax roll, or back across the Atlantic, creating a new audit manual for the Guyanese auditor general. “It may be hubris,” he says, “but we old codgers believe we still have something to offer, that our skills have great value, particularly in the developing world and places like the former Soviet Union where, in some enterprises, accounting practices are rather outdated and unacceptable.”

Parsons agrees: “What a waste of my talents and experience — I say immodestly — if I were to simply retire.” At a sprightly 57, the former head of PwC’s global mining group already had several decades of experience in a wide variety of countries, each with its own quixotic variant of fiscal sophistication. His retirement came when PwC requested he return from his global mining base in Jakarta. “[I] love Canada,” he says, “but Indonesia was now home and also the centre of some of the most interesting opportunities in the mining sector.”

The World Bank has been the source of much of Parsons’ consulting work since his retirement. In recent years, he has accepted World Bank consults in Afghan- istan, Laos, Tanzania and Mongolia. Along with the World Bank, the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) and any number of multinational funding and aid agencies sponsor projects that require short-term or part-time consultants and volunteers.

In Parsons’ experience most of these agencies look to natural resources as a key mover for struggling economies. If a developing economy is well-endowed in oil and gas or hard minerals, foreign investment is a far easier sell. But not without the proper fiscal regime that professionals such as CAs are tailor-made to create. Once in place, says Parsons, “they can get foreign investment in there, and before long, generate foreign exchange earnings, cash flow and jobs. Let’s face it,” he continues, “I was recently in Kabul — which is just a pile of rubble — and Toyota’s not going to build a car plant there any time soon. But maybe a western mining company will commit to a gold mine.”

There is little chance of Parsons and his colleagues striking gold in their present endeavors. Money is not the point, he insists, and agencies like the World Bank know it. When associates at the World Bank heard the first whispers of Parsons’ impending retirement, they were on his case forthwith. “I was too expensive when at PwC,” Parsons says. “This is a labour of love, really, because the World Bank maximum rate on a daily basis equals what I was getting at PwC in two hours. You do this work because you want to stimulate your brain, see the world, see the smiles on [people’s] faces when you’ve made some little difference.”

Chiswell and Parsons agree some of their most demanding and interesting projects are more often than not located in former communist regimes. According to Parsons, many accounting professionals in former communist countries lack training in western accounting standards. “The people have a  mindset shaped by different business and economic systems,” says Chiswell. “Try explaining our way of doing things to them and the blank stares are to die for.” In Kazakhstan, I took that literally,” laughs Parsons. What his mobsters did understand — with a vengeance — was the concept of profit and loss, and in particular, the loss facing their organization should the Kazakh gold mine operate with some semblance of oversight. “Sadly, that experience is not an anomaly for western businessmen,” he admits, “but there are far more of these countries and companies that recognize that fiscal responsibility is a crucial step to getting back on their feet.” 

Although their work is often an eye-opener to the vagaries of corruption, greased palms and portentous violence endemic to so many Third World economies, both men are convinced that supposed shop-worn CAs can make an extraordinary difference in very concrete and measurable ways. “We get the job done,” says Parsons, “even though it may take many years before the results, the stability and accountability the client hoped for is realized.” These successes provide an equally measurable sense of satisfaction and accomplishment.

Much of this gratification, admits Chiswell, is drawn from his delight in being able to say I told you so to those who might think he is over-the-hill. In 1994, nearing the infamous mandatory retirement age of 65, during one of Lesotho’s spasms of factional fighting, Chiswell could hear the sound of AK47 fire and concussive mortar rounds exploding near his hotel lobby. “Yet, the project was completed,” he says, echoing Parsons. “One could argue that even an old fogey can still be of some use.”

According to a 2004 Statistics Canada release, the percentage of seniors working beyond 65 has been rising in recent years and that trend will continue for the foreseeable future, according to projected demographics. These are the inevitable forces driving the economy of the graying post-war Boomer generation. Their competence, energy and desire to contribute will grow in importance as the succeeding generation’s underwhelming numbers enter the workforce. By 2030, the ratio of the 65-plus population to the traditional workforce of those 15 to 64 will almost double.

As for the 65-plus workforce, the Statistics Canada study singles out accountants as an aging work category that is ex- panding at a faster pace than other skilled occupations. “Which is not surprising,” says Chiswell, “because CAs never really stop being CAs. I mean, you can easily choose to not turn off that skill, and it’s an expertise you generally use, personally, to the end of your days. It’s a  facility that is more cerebral with its focus on very specific investigative and diagnostic tools.” Indeed, accounting is playing a major part in the burgeoning 21st century reliance on more service and information-related skill-sets. “As long as a 65-plus CA still has what it takes and has kept up with new industry standards and practices,” he muses, “the ‘mandatory’ in retirement for a 65-year-old, vis-à-vis his or her relevance and competency, shouldn’t be a consideration.”

In any event, the concept of mandatory retirement is a misleading notion, given that there is no actual law requiring a fixed retirement age. What employers in most provinces can do, by law, is exercise age discrimination for all employees who reach 65, effectively firing them under the guise of retirement. If the 65-year-old employee is still compos mentis, the employer has the option of keeping him or her on.

Yet for many aging CAs, retirement from their firms or private practices and a move into consulting or accounting-specific volunteer work is a preferred option. This alternative to pulling down one’s shingle is brought into greater relief, with a Statistics Canada Life Tables chart that reveals a 65-year-old male will average 16 more years of life; at 70, 12.7 years; and 75, 9.7 years, according to Statistics Canada’s 1995-’97 calculations. On the other hand, research has shown that mandatory retirees who simply withdraw to their Florida cabanas have an increased likelihood of dying much earlier. Those who find a new purpose or continue to apply their career skills tend to extend their existence significantly.

“Staying alive in a useful way, rather than just for the sake of continuing to draw breath or take up space, seems to be the most important point to my retirement,” asserts former Ultramar corporate controller Mike Jarvis. “There is little doubt that I remain active, sprightly and above ground because of my efforts to keep my mind and body in full operating mode.” The 71-year-old CA, who holds a law degree from Glasgow University, first qualified in 1958 from the Scottish Institute of Chartered Accountants. Following this he worked with the Glasgow branch of Coopers Bros. (later Coopers and Lybrand) before moving to Peat Marwick Mitchell (Venezuela) as audit manager. From there he became audit supervisor at Price Waterhouse in Toronto in 1968 and then, again, jumping at a new challenge with Canadian Fuel Marketers Ltd., which was eventually bought over by Ultramar. Seemingly settling with Ultramar Canada, Jarvis promptly retired at 55, only to rejoin the profession for five more years as vice-president of finance at a healthcare facility. “It was an itchy-footed career,” he says, “and one that didn’t bode well for my sitting on the couch for the next 20 years, or three years, however things went.”

Soon after his absolutely final delisting from the active CA role in 1993, Jarvis was off consulting in Panama. Then he was in Bolivia plying his knowledge of the oil and gas industry as part of a team developing audit systems for the South American country’s recently privatized oil and gas sector. While at it, he was asked to look at its tax laws and recommend changes to improve the revenues of the oil and gas industries. “To me, the mind is a muscle that has to be exercised or it atrophies,” Jarvis says. “So when I found I had only six weeks to absorb the tax laws and regulations, I was excited and up for the challenge.” Much of his work in Bolivia was politically sensitive and perhaps unwelcome to some. Still, he kept his head down, ignored the prospect of working amid violent demonstrations, and toiled away at helping create tax laws that would best fit this country’s most important industry. “I think it is this kind of adrenaline flow, this kind of revitalizing experience that not only keeps you going, but helps validate the 35 years of hard work and continuous learning demanded by the profession in general,” he says. “In a way, I demand that it be demanding; otherwise, where’s the proof of its worth? Where’s the proof that a senior citizen can still have the right stuff?”

Ron Scanlan is supremely confident that his stable of former retired and semi-retired professionals — a few of them over 80 — are more than capable of getting the job done and thriving in the oftentimes trying conditions of the developing world. As the Manitoba and northwestern Ontario regional manager for the Canadian Executive Service Organization (CESO), he has helped shepherd scores of retired professional volunteer advisers into projects in more than 35 developing economies. “Interestingly, it is the senior men and women who seem most eager to give back to society by taking up assignments in these often rather taxing situations,” he says. CESO works closely with the Canadian government — particularly CIDA and the Department of Indian Affairs — to fulfill its mandate to promote governance and economic development within Canada’s aboriginal communities and the business and public sector institutions of the Third World.

Although it is a not-for-profit organization, CESO occasionally hands out advice on how to create business linkages, reciprocal trade relations and joint ventures between its foreign clients and Canadian companies. “We welcome an economic blow-back to Canada from the work our advisers do,” explains Scanlan. “Still, CESO is primarily a no-strings-attached, business-helping-business initiative.” His point-men, his ambassadors to business, are volunteers like Jarvis and Chiswell. “When [Chiswell] comes back with his incredible stories, I do wonder how he and so many others are always just raring to take off again into the unknown,” he says. “There seems to be an innate ability and desire in these people to absorb the new and peculiar. They revel in it.”

In 2002 for example, Jarvis happily canoed from island to island off the coast of Panama in an attempt to develop an accounting system for a very traditional indigenous community run by a grand chief and his truculent subchiefs. “The chief wanted to have consolidated statements,” he explains, “but each subchief ran his own little cashbox fiefdom and wasn’t really willing to disclose how much was being collected from the people.” Jarvis lived with the natives, sleeping in earthen-floored shelters and dining on local delicacies of undetermined origin. “It was as much as I could do to concentrate on teaching these guys what was basically accounting 101, instead of just luxuriating in all the cultural richness around me,” he recalls.

Remaining focused exclusively on the job at hand can sometimes be a difficult task on these sojourns, admits Wilfrid Wilkinson, FCA, the current chair of Rotary International’s 2005 100th anniversary convention. He was one of the key figures representing the service club’s involvement in the World Health Organization’s worldwide polio eradication program. He worked on behalf of Rotary International and the Rotary Foundation PolioPlus immunization task force to help raise US$600 million as Rotary’s financial contribution to that project. Wilkinson was also vice-chair of its Afghan refugee relief effort committee, and has been exposed to the travails of the world’s most impoverished and downtrodden peoples for decades. “There is a desperate task at hand in these situations,” he explains, “but you can’t help but become enriched by the experience, especially if you’re making a difference.”

A Rotary member for 43 years, current president of the Rotary Foundation of Canada and past vice-president and member of its international board of directors, his 2001 retirement from private practice has only released more time to direct his energies to the service club’s many good works and other community activities. “Like any organization, money is key, and how it’s sourced, allocated and accounted for is all-important,” he says. “That’s why CAs have made such inroads in the decision-making roles of this and so many other aid organizations.”

Now 74, Wilkinson most recently  made an onsite accounting of the millions of dollars flowing into the relief efforts for the growing number of refugee camps popping up along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border during the recent US-led war. “Even now, I’m learning and in complete wonderment,” he says. “There I was in a convoy of vehicles moving carefully through the Khyber Pass, bracketed by pickup trucks bristling with bodyguards. You do ask yourself, ‘Why am I here?’” But some four million refugees awaited, and Wilkinson and his colleagues set about providing shelter and basic necessities for two camps adopted by the Rotary Club.

“As I said, you’re always learning,” he says. After sorting out the financial entanglements of such a complex project, he worked to offer inducements for those who might be willing to return to Afghanistan. “We offered cows and goats and such,” he recalls, “but the people were soon back. We didn’t account for all the land being full of mines. The roads had been cleared but the fields were not and their animals were blown to bits in short order. So you just have to shrug and say, ‘OK, on to plan B,’ which involved training them in other ways to earn a living such as masonry, carpentry, rug making, embroidery and English as a second language.”

For many, the next best plan would be to simply surrender to the devastation, overwhelmed. But for these senior CAs, a commitment has been made to give of their time and expertise, to continue to seek challenges as part of a unique fellowship of professionals who refuse to bow to age or convention or, in their case, the unorthodox and bizarre. “The scenario that has always seemed the most frightening,” admits Parsons, “is the idea of finding myself just sitting around the pool sipping margaritas. I’m sure my wife would have gone crazy, even before me.” 

Robert Colapinto is a Toronto-based writer