On External Disclosures...

It is important for a company to have a plan for its external disclosures. Disclosures are for financial metrics, business metrics and the controls around them. It is important that these metrics have sound controls around them before they are disclosed. You can’t make a statement about restating a metric because of data or calculation error. It affects the credibility. It is also important to select the right metrics. They need to be close to the business to reflect the health. They should also trend in the right direction - else the value will be impacted. The last piece to bear in mind is the number of metrics. If we disclose too many, it’s too much disclosure. You can consider stopping disclosures, yes… but then the street becomes suspicious. So you need to Telegraph it appropriately. As cfo it is important to consider these dynamics for ipo readiness. 

While considering metrics taking a funnel approach helps at times:  the metrics you want to report, the definitions to calculate those metrics, the data needed to calculate the metrics, the controls (cleansing, auditability, etc) needed around the data, and source of the data.  

Several companies go public with material weaknesses in their control environment. It is common for companies to NOT incur the cost and overhead to eliminate all material weaknesses till they have to. But it is important to be aware of them and have a fixing plan. As audit committee chair, it was important for us to have an annual plan on what areas we will address and review through the year - accounting standards across entities (ifrs v us gaap), process weaknesses, consolidation mechanisms, ppa approaches, systems, etc.