A Mentor for the Ages

As many of you know, I spent nearly a dozen years covering the accounting profession.

During that span I met and engaged with a number of the profession’s most influential – occasionally in an adversarial capacity, but far more frequently in a tabula rasa mode – siphoning all the experience and knowledge of others to my rather blank mental slate in the accounting arena. There are those to whom I’ll be forever grateful for their patience and understanding and who helped guide me through a sector that even today, I still find myself in a learning mode.

And then there was Professor Abraham Briloff, who quietly passed away last week at the age of 96.

In the circles I currently travel in – i.e. succession and M&A, his name might not trigger instant recognition, as his teachings and writings centered more on the integrity – and at times lack thereof – of the profession and an often scathing criticism of corporate finance and the questionable accounting maneuvers that were often deployed on company balance sheets.

Despite his slight frame and a height that may have been a toothpick or two over 5-feet, he fearlessly went toe-to-toe against such titans as Waste Management and Google, dissecting their financial statements and spotlighting irregularities that somehow had passed muster with their auditors.

And, oh yes, he was legally blind and had his daughter, who was also a CPA, read the statements to him.

His writing pedigree was established long before he became a semi-regular columnist for me, in such august publications as Barron’s and later authored four books on accounting, including his first in 1967, “The Effectiveness of Accounting Communication,” which was based on his doctoral dissertation.

His story was typical of his generation.

His parents were Russian immigrants – his father a butcher and his mother a seamstress. He, as many in the profession did, graduated from City College of New York with an accounting degree. In between, he taught night classes on bookkeeping and stenography and reviewed and prepared tax returns for a midsized firm before starting his own practice in 1951.

We would meet once a month for lunch at his favorite German restaurant where like a true accountant; he would never veer from his favorite – potato pancakes accompanied by a glass of Chardonnay. Afterward, we would take walks around Gramercy Park, him holding my arm for guidance, but all the while waxing eloquently and often despondently, about where the profession was headed particularly during the accounting scandals of a decade ago.

When he wanted to make a point, he would employ both your first and last name, like “Bill Carlino, why is it that many accounting firms have seemingly abandoned common sense?” I would just listen and hopefully, through osmosis or otherwise, gain some of the insight he offered free of charge from his seven decades in the profession.

And unlike an accountant he never once let me pick up the check. He always told me this was his way of returning the favor for publishing his opinions.

I never got the chance to tell him that it was far more the other way around.