Columbia Business School Launches Center to Tackle Tough Issues on Accounting and Security Analysis.

Business Editors/Education Writers

NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Oct. 8, 2003

Columbia Business School announces the launch of The Center for Excellence in Accounting and Security Analysis (CEASA).

CEASA's Advisory Board is led by former SEC Chairman Arthur Levitt. Mr. Levitt, who is currently an advisor to the investment firm, The Carlyle Group, said, "The Center will bring together the best ideas in academia and practice to provide objective solutions to current and anticipated issues facing regulators and practitioners." CEASA will be co-directed by Stephen Penman, the George O. May Professor of Accounting at Columbia Business School, and Trevor Harris, a former Columbia Business School faculty member and current Managing Director at and head of the Global Valuation and Accounting Team in Equity Research at Morgan Stanley.

CEASA's Advisory Board members include: Phil Ameen, Vice President and Controller, GE; Mark Anson, CIO of CalPERS; John Biggs, former CEO of TIAA-CREF; Richard Carroll, Asst. Controller of Accounting, IBM; Michael Cook, former Chair Deloitte and Touche; Lee Cooperman, Chairman & CEO, Omega Advisors; Stephen Crawford, EVP & CFO, Morgan Stanley; Sir Howard Davies, former Chair of Financial Services Authority in U.K.; Glenn Hubbard, Former Chairman of President Bush's Council of Economic Advisors and Professor of Finance and Economics, Columbia Business School; Sallie Krawcheck, Chairman & CEO, Smith Barney; David F. Larcker, Ernst & Young Professor of Accounting, The Wharton School, UPenn; Carol Junge Loomis, Editor-at-Large, Fortune Magazine; James A. Ohlson, Leonard N. Stern Professor of Business and Acting Chair of the Accounting Department, Stern School of Business, NYU; Robert J. Swieringa, Dean, S.C. Johnson Graduate School of Management, Cornell University and former member of the FASB.

The Center for Excellence in Accounting and Security Analysis (CEASA) hosts the first meeting of its Advisory Board on Wednesday, October 8, 2003. At the inaugural meeting, the Board will select specific topics to be analyzed by unbiased expert teams. White papers will be issued and presented to regulators responsible for the formation and implementation of public policy, as well as to business leaders whose companies are affected by legislative and regulatory actions.

"Columbia Business School is a natural home for the Center," says the School's Dean Meyer Feldberg. "With a rich history of fundamental analysis and access to talent unparalleled in the country, the Center will be a powerful voice."

Generously funded through grants from the GE Foundation, IBM and Morgan Stanley, the Center is being established at a time when financial reporting and security analysis is under unprecedented scrutiny and review.