Foundation for Accounting Education installs new president

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The Foundation for Accounting Education announced its new President June 4. John Kearney, a shareholder of Jaeckle Kearney & Lepselter in Garden City, will serve for a one-year term. The New York State Society of Certified Public Accountants (NYSSCPA) created the foundation in 1972 as a continuing professional education resource for accountants and other financial […]

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The Foundation for Accounting Education announced its new President June 4.

John Kearney, a shareholder of Jaeckle Kearney & Lepselter in Garden City, will serve for a one-year term. The New York State Society of Certified Public Accountants (NYSSCPA) created the foundation in 1972 as a continuing professional education resource for accountants and other financial professionals in this state.

The foundation also announced three new trustees, who will serve for three-year terms. They include Patricia Johnson, an assistant professor at Canisius College; A. Rief Kanan, director of The Business Institute School of Business at the State University of New York at New Paltz; and Ronald G. Hegt, a tax partner at Crowe Harwath, LLP in New York City.

Johnson, re-elected as a foundation trustee, previously served as secretary. She joined the NYSSCPA in 1977 and is chairwoman of its Public Sector Oversight Committee and former chairwoman of the Higher Education Committee. She is a member of its Not-for-Profit and Anti-Money Laundering committees. She is also the new president of its Buffalo Chapter.

Kanan joined the NYSSCPA in 1992 and served as a member of its Professional Ethics, Mediation and Arbitration, Financial Accounting Standards and Auditing Standards committees. He was also vice president, treasurer, and a member of the executive board for the NYSSCPA Mid-Hudson Chapter and now serves as chairman of its Cooperation with Education Committee.

He was also a member of the foundation Campus Ambassador Committee and now serves as the Campus Liaison to the Society. He has also served as chairman of the Career Opportunities in the Accounting Profession (COAP) Advisory Board.

Hegt joined the NYSSCPA in 1978. He has served as chairman of its Taxation of Individuals Committee and as a member of its Tax Division Oversight, Professional Ethics, Closely Held & S Corporations, Relations with IRS and New York, Multistate and Local Taxation committees. He was honored by the foundation as Outstanding Discussion Leader of the Year.

Earlier in May, the NYSSCPA installed a Syracuse accountant as president for a one-year term.

Gail Kinsella, a partner at accounting firm Testone, Marshall & Discenza, LLP (TMD) of Syracuse, began her term May 10. K
Kinsella is a partner in TMD’s audit practice group and coordinates its quality control and peer review programs.

She has also served as president, vice president, and treasurer of the NYSSCPA’s Syracuse chapter. On the state level, she has served as a board member at large and as vice president for committees. She has also served as president of the board of trustees for the Foundation for Accounting Education.

TMD partner David Moynihan was president of the NYSSCPA from June 2009 to June 2010. Kinsella became president-elect of the state society a year ago. She is a graduate of Le Moyne College.

Syracuse attorney named chairman of bar’s labor and employment law section

Law, Accounting & Taxes, Subscriber Only

SYRACUSE — An attorney with Syracuse–based law firm Bond, Schoeneck & King, PLLC will lead the New York State Bar Association’s Labor and Employment Law Section for the next year. John Gaal became chairman of the section in June. He has been a member of the bar association for 33 years and is a past

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SYRACUSE — An attorney with Syracuse–based law firm Bond, Schoeneck & King, PLLC will lead the New York State Bar Association’s Labor and Employment Law Section for the next year.

John Gaal became chairman of the section in June. He has been a member of the bar association for 33 years and is a past chairman of the Young Lawyers Section.

Gaal has also been a member of the association’s House of Delegates, Special Committee on AIDS and the Law, and Special Committee on Mandatory Pro Bono Service. He has been with Bond, Schoeneck & King since 1978.

The labor and employment law landscape has been shifting lately as the National Labor Relations Board has been changing the way it approaches some issues. And while many clients assume that the National Labor Relations Act affects only unionized workplaces, that’s not the case, Gaal notes.

Non-union employers need to pay close attention to the act and the labor board as well, he says.

One recent area of activity for the board has been social media. The board has been exploring whether company policies regarding social-media use conflict with employee rights established under the labor act, Gaal says.

The board has seemed more open to that possibility of late, he explains.

The economy also continues to challenge many employers.

“We’re still dealing with it,” Gaal says. “Nobody had a crystal ball before and it’s even less so now.”

Labor and employment attorneys have been seeing more activity in collective wage and hour claims filed by employees, Gaal adds. Discrimination cases also continue to be an issue for employers and employees.

The changing technology landscape is perhaps the biggest current challenge for labor lawyers, Gaal says. Lawyers can’t afford to ignore social media in particular.

“Understanding how these things apply in a workplace is a challenge for labor and employment lawyers,” he says. “You can no longer risk not understanding what Facebook and LinkedIn are.”

If lawyers don’t take the time to learn about those technologies and how employees might be using them, they’re not serving their clients well, he adds. The technologies change so rapidly that keeping up takes effort, Gaal notes.

Even simple email communications with clients can raise issues.

Most employers these days have policies in place stating that they can examine and monitor any communications that pass through their systems. An attorney getting email from clients’ work addresses might want to advise them to use a different account, Gaal says.

Gaal’s section is launching a new mentoring program this year. Organizers have matched 30 mentors with young lawyers starting out in the field.

It’s an effort to help young attorneys learn about the benefits of bar and section membership, Gaal says.

Some of those young attorneys might not even have jobs yet, he adds. Reaching out to them and getting them involved with the bar association early can inform them of how the group can help.

Most of the young lawyers who signed up from the program are from Downstate. Gaal says the section is hoping to draw more interest from upstate New York in the future.

A new group of mentors and young attorneys will be matched every year, he says.

The bar association has 77,000 members statewide and the Labor and Employment Law Section has more than 2,300 members.

Northern District of N.Y. adopts local patent rules

Law, Accounting & Taxes, Manufacturing & Engineering, Subscriber Only

As patent cases have become more frequent in recent years, local judicial districts across the nation have been adopting their own rules to help courts handle the cases more efficiently. The federal U.S. District Court for the Northern District of New York is the latest to do so. The rules are an attempt to help

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As patent cases have become more frequent in recent years, local judicial districts across the nation have been adopting their own rules to help courts handle the cases more efficiently.

The federal U.S. District Court for the Northern District of New York is the latest to do so. The rules are an attempt to help judges and litigants streamline patent cases and provide a detailed process for how they’re handled, says George McGuire, chairman of the intellectual-property law group at Syracuse–based Bond, Schoeneck & King, PLLC.

Judges aren’t always familiar with the flow of patent cases and their various complexities, and litigants themselves often disagree vehemently over processes, McGuire says. Creating a set of standard local rules should help the cases proceed more smoothly.

For companies in the area that might find themselves in a patent case, the most important aspect of the rules is their stance on early disclosures. The rules require both sides to make some key disclosures about their positions early in the case, McGuire says.

That makes the exchange of information between parties more efficient and helps crystallize the important issues in the case. The disclosures could also help lead to quicker resolutions.

“It does facilitate better settlement discussions,” McGuire says.

Early disclosure means businesses need to be better prepared for the case from the outset. Some of the disclosures now required early in the process were often delayed before, McGuire says.

And those disclosures sometimes include production of documents that can take time.

“You can’t not have those things ready to go,” McGuire says. “You need to do a lot of work up front in preparing the case.”

The Northern District is the first federal district in New York to adopt local patent rules, he adds. The region includes a large swath of upstate New York stretching from Syracuse to Albany and from the Canadian border to the Southern Tier.

It’s a region with a deep bench of experience in patent law and the rules are meant to help the district take a leadership position in the area of intellectual-property cases, McGuire says.

“It is a district in which there is a high level of sophistication when it comes to patent litigation,” he says.

The Southern District of New York proposed local patent rules several years ago, but has not adopted any yet, McGuire says.

In the last decade, more courts have been adopting local rules as the number of patent cases has increased. At first, it was district courts with high volumes of the cases.

Others have followed suit over the years, McGuire says.

Patent assets have become increasingly important to companies in the last 10 years, McGuire says. More firms are taking action to enforce intellectual-property rights in order to leverage those assets.

Also, there has been a movement in recent years by what are known as non-practicing entities to buy up patents in various technology areas, McGuire says. Those businesses don’t actually use the patents themselves, but attempt to strike licensing deals with other firms.

If a license agreement isn’t successful, non-practicing entities will frequently sue, McGuire says.

“There has been a huge number of cases brought by non-practicing entities,” he says. “That’s become very prevalent.”

The new rules went into effect Jan. 1.

Steele Law grows since founding

Law, Accounting & Taxes, Small Business, Subscriber Only

OSWEGO — When Kimberly Steele lost her job in a bank merger in 2006, she decided to strike out on her own. Steele founded The Steele Law Firm, P.C. five years ago. At the time, she was its sole attorney. The firm now employs seven lawyers, along with support staff members, says Steele, managing attorney.

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OSWEGO — When Kimberly Steele lost her job in a bank merger in 2006, she decided to strike out on her own.

Steele founded The Steele Law Firm, P.C. five years ago. At the time, she was its sole attorney. The firm now employs seven lawyers, along with support staff members, says Steele, managing attorney.

Steele lost her job with Oswego County National Bank after it was acquired by Syracuse–based Alliance Financial Corp.

“I just wanted to try it on my own and see if I could do it the way I think business can be done,” she says.

That means allowing her employees to drive the business, Steele says. She runs a profit-sharing program and says future growth plans will be decided collectively.

“If that’s what the group so desires, then it will be pursued,” she says of future expansion.

Steele Law specializes in construction law, bonding, commercial litigation, and creditor representation.

The firm has been able to grow despite the economic downturn, which has hit the construction industry especially hard. There’s usually a need in the industry for legal representation regardless of the economic climate, Steele says.

Construction law and work on bonding especially are specialized fields, Steele adds. Not every attorney has experience or does work in those arenas.

Steele Law has clients all over the country. The firm has been able to reach other geographies because many of its contractor clients work outside upstate New York.

That has helped the firm pick up work in new markets, Steele says. Contractors, she notes, can’t rely on work in their own backyards alone given the downturn in construction spending.

Many are looking to joint ventures with other construction firms and employing other alternative methods to get projects off the ground, Steele says. Those arrangements often require legal work, she adds.

And projects around the country that launched before the recession hit have been scaled back, Steele says.

“There’s always some need for legal counsel even if owners need to tailor down their initial visions,” she says.

Steele says she got her start in construction unexpectedly. She walked into a law firm in Rochester on a whim after a bad job interview with another firm. She wound up meeting a partner and the firm, which specialized in construction law, hired her on the spot.

Steele Law’s clients include school districts, developers, commercial-project owners, architects, engineers, and banks, along with contractors.

The attorneys she’s hired over the past few years have been people she’s known in the industry. One is a lawyer from Manhattan she met at an industry event in Buffalo who is also trained as an architect.

Another was an opposing counsel before the two teamed on cases in later years, Steele says.

Latest funding round for Diffinity includes more CNY support

Manufacturing & Engineering, Subscriber Only, Technology

Diffinity Genomics, a biotechnology firm based in Rochester, closed a second round of funding in May that included support from the Allyn Family Capital Fund, LLC. Eric Allyn, a co-chairman of the board of directors at Skaneateles Falls–based Welch Allyn, has joined Diffinity’s board. It’s an important addition, Diffinity CEO Jeffrey Helfer says. “He brings a

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Diffinity Genomics, a biotechnology firm based in Rochester, closed a second round of funding in May that included support from the Allyn Family Capital Fund, LLC.

Eric Allyn, a co-chairman of the board of directors at Skaneateles Falls–based Welch Allyn, has joined Diffinity’s board. It’s an important addition, Diffinity CEO Jeffrey Helfer says.

“He brings a lot of added value beyond the money,” Helfer says.

Allyn has contacts with potential suppliers and customers and Welch Allyn as a company understands product distribution well, Helfer notes. Diffinity develops products used in isolating and analyzing nucleic acids like DNA.

It’s work that life-sciences professionals perform on a regular basis. The company’s first two products are pipette tips used to move liquids in a laboratory setting.

The tips contain a proprietary material created using nanotechnology that allows for rapid purification of samples, according to Diffinity.

Helfer declined to disclose the exact amount of money raised in the financing round, but says it was seven figures. Diffinity will use the funding to continue ramping up its sales and manufacturing efforts.

Diffinity’s products are sold through distributors, but the company still needs internal staff to support them. The company expects to add three people in that area over the next year, Helfer says, and another one or two after that.

In manufacturing, the firm expects to add some additional equipment and plans to hire another two people in the next six months.

Diffinity employs 12 people companywide.

The company’s growth is being driven in part by the expansion of the life-sciences sector, Helfer says. Falling costs and improved equipment mean more and more people are sequencing DNA, he notes.

“This is now suddenly becoming more affordable and doable for more people,” he says. “But the pain points still remain.”

One of those pain points is speed. Diffinity’s products can purify samples in one minute. The purification process, essential to much research involving DNA, becomes easier, faster, and less expensive, Helfer says.

“We have a product that plays to a fundamental customer need,” he says. “It’s a pain point that is substantial and is not going to go away.”

Allyn says he came across Diffinity through contacts at the Cayuga Venture Fund in Ithaca, where he’s been involved as an investor in the past. He saw a product in a growth market with strong potential.

The type of lab work performed with Diffinity’s products is set for major growth in the years ahead, says Allyn, who is the founder and managing partner of Allyn Family Capital. And Diffinity’s products make that work more efficient.

“What I saw was some good technology and some good intellectual property,” Allyn says. “And I think they have a good team in place.”

Mass Med Angels, LLC was another key investor in Diffinity’s latest funding round. Diffinity also brought on another new director in addition to Allyn. Don Pogorzelski, previously president of Genzyme Diagnostics, has joined the firm’s board.

Diffinity, founded in 2005, has also received investment in the past from the Syracuse–based Seed Capital Fund of CNY, LLC. Diffinity’s technology was originally developed at the University of Rochester

June survey shows slowdown in state manufacturing growth

Manufacturing & Engineering, Subscriber Only

Growth for New York’s manufacturers downshifted in June, according to the latest Empire State Manufacturing Survey from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. The general business conditions index in the survey, which was released June 15, plummeted 14.8 points to 2.3. The descent brought the index to its lowest reading since last November, when

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Growth for New York’s manufacturers downshifted in June, according to the latest Empire State Manufacturing Survey from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

The general business conditions index in the survey, which was released June 15, plummeted 14.8 points to 2.3. The descent brought the index to its lowest reading since last November, when it barely broke above 0 and registered less than 1 point.

In June, 30.6 percent of survey respondents reported improving business conditions. Another 28.3 percent said conditions worsened, and 41 percent indicated they remained the same as last month.

“It’s kind of a middling report this time,” says Randall Wolken, president of the Manufacturers Association of Central New York. “We prefer to see expanded activity, but the index is still reading positive, which I think is a good sign.”

Manufacturers are concerned about the continuing debt crisis in Europe, according to Wolken. Some are also worried about federal defense spending cuts that are looming next year unless Congress acts, he adds.

“There’s some general uncertainty,” he says. “And that tends to tamper down the indexes.”

Most of the manufacturing survey’s other current indexes fell in June. The new-orders index slipped 6.1 points to 2.2, and the shipments index sank 19.3 points to 4.8.

The number of unfilled orders continued to drop, with the unfilled orders index losing a third of a point to -5.2. Delivery times were unchanged from last month at 0.

Manufacturers drew down inventories in June, according to the inventories index, which skidded 13.1 points to -8.3.

The prices manufacturers paid proved to be somewhat of a silver lining amid the nearly across-the-board index declines. The prices-paid index was cut nearly in half in June, spiraling down 17.8 points to 19.6. That indicated slowing inflation in the prices manufacturers paid for raw materials.

However, inflation in the prices manufacturers received also lessened. The prices-received index declined by 11 points to 1.

Manufacturers said they were taking on new employees, but not as quickly as last month. June’s number-of-employees index decreased 8.1 points to 12.4. And the average employee-workweek index plunged nearly 9 points to 3.1.

Future expectations

Prospects for the future also took a hit in June, according to the survey’s forward-looking indicators, which measure expectations for a time six months from now. Still, manufacturers were more bullish about the future than they were about current conditions.

The future general business conditions index slid 6.1 points to 23.1. June marked its fifth straight month of decline.

Yet more than twice as many survey respondents thought conditions would be better in six months than believed they would be worse. Just over 39.5 percent predicted better conditions, while 16.4 percent said conditions will be worse. The remaining 44.1 percent of those surveyed anticipated that conditions would be the same.

The future new-orders index fell 14.7 points to 15.5, meaning manufacturers still see increasing new orders on the horizon, despite slashing their optimism level. Following suit was the future shipments index, which plunged 12.9 points to 12.4.

Unfilled orders will decline, manufacturers predicted. The future unfilled-orders index slipped to -8.25, down from 0 last month. Delivery times are also set to fall, according to manufacturers, who drove down the future delivery-time index by 3.4 points to -1.

Future inventories will be smaller, according to the future inventories index. It slipped 4.6 points to -15.5.

Manufacturers continued to brace for paying higher prices, although they drew back on their predicted rate of increase. The future prices-paid index dropped 23.8 points to 34. The future prices-received index fell by less, moving down 5.4 points to 17.5.

Survey respondents plan to hire more while slowing growth in the hours their employees work. The future number-of-employees index rose 4.4 points to 16.5, and the future average employee-workweek index slipped 6.4 points to 2.1.

Both the future capital expenditures and future technology spending indexes increased slightly. The future capital-expenditures index climbed 2.4 points to 21.7, while the future technology-spending index inched up 0.3 points to 12.4.

“Capital spending plans actually remained quite strong,” Wolken says. “That’s good news. That’s one of the best indicators for the future.”

The New York Fed polls a set pool of about 200 New York manufacturing executives for the monthly survey. About 100 executives typically respond, and the Fed seasonally adjusts data.

Tetra Tech Architects & Engineers expands with new markets, services

Construction, Design & Real Estate, Small Business, Subscriber Only, Technology

ITHACA — A locally based business unit of Tetra Tech, Inc. (NASDAQ: TTEK) has expanded its footprint to New England and added new services. Tetra Tech Architects & Engineers (TAE), based in Ithaca, combined with another business within Tetra Tech that provided services including land development, transportation planning and design, remediation, assessment and compliance, water

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ITHACA — A locally based business unit of Tetra Tech, Inc. (NASDAQ: TTEK) has expanded its footprint to New England and added new services.

Tetra Tech Architects & Engineers (TAE), based in Ithaca, combined with another business within Tetra Tech that provided services including land development, transportation planning and design, remediation, assessment and compliance, water and wastewater engineering, and natural-resources management and permitting.

The move added the other unit’s services to TAE’s architecture and engineering offerings and brought 60 new employees. TAE now employs 160 people, including 75 in Ithaca and Syracuse.

TAE also now has offices in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Connecticut as a result of the combination.

“It’s really a strategic move to continue growth,” Kevin Terry, vice president of operations, says of the combination with the other Tetra Tech business unit.

The two businesses’ services match well and will complement each other, he adds. Both units’ existing customers will now have access to a wider range of services, and the more extensive offerings should help TAE capture new work.

TAE has worked frequently on school projects over its history and expects to grow that business in New England, says Maria Livingston, director of business development. TAE is able to provide both architecture and engineering services for school clients, offering an attractive option, she adds.

The new services will only improve that advantage, she says.

The combination with the new business unit should also get TAE in front of clients in new sectors, Terry says. The other business unit, which was based in Massachusetts, worked frequently with municipal and state level governments and with developers.

The combination should help grow TAE in Central New York, Terry says. The unit frequently handles work for clients from around the country from its Ithaca base.

In addition to Syracuse and Ithaca, TAE has offices in Rochester, Albany, and Farmingdale, N.Y.; San Antonio, Texas; Seattle, South Seattle, and Richland, Wash.; Newark, Del; and Princeton, N.J.

The other major piece of TAE’s business is work with the federal government, Terry says. TAE works on projects for agencies such as the Defense Department and State Department around the world and across the United States.

TAE entered that business about five years ago and it has since grown to about half of the unit’s overall work, Terry says.

Working with other business units within Tetra Tech, a project might start off with a study on providing clean drinking water to an area and end with a TAE-designed community center, Livingston says.

Terry notes that the stability provided as a unit within a large, publically traded company has allowed TAE to expand at a time when many businesses are pulling back.

“We’re able to make strategic moves that allow us to move forward and grow,” he says. “This is a great example of that.”

For its fiscal second quarter, which ended April 1, Tetra Tech, Inc. generated revenue of $624.3 million, up from

$612.6 million a year earlier. The firm earned $22.3 million in the period, up from $17.5 million a year ago.

For the fiscal year that ended Oct. 2, Tetra Tech generated revenue of $2.57 billion, up from $2.2 billion in the previous year. The company produced profit of $90 million, up from $76.8 million a year earlier.

Tetra Tech, Inc., which employs 13,000 people, provides a range of consulting, engineering, program management, construction management, and technical services.

Key on track to close deal for HSBC branches

Banks & Credit Unions, Subscriber Only

KeyBank remains on track to acquire 37 HSBC branches in the Buffalo and Rochester markets in July. The deal should close July 13, according to Key. The bank will acquire 26 branches in the Buffalo area and 11 in the Rochester market. The acquisition will bring $2.4 billion in deposits and $400 million in loans.

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Chobani founder Ulukaya wins entrepreneur award

Manufacturing & Engineering, Small Business, Technology

NEW BERLIN — The Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Awards honored Chobani founder, President, and CEO Hamdi Ulukaya as the winner in the

Hancock International Airport wins $63,000 federal grant

Construction, Design & Real Estate, Technology

The federal government has awarded Syracuse Hancock International Airport with a grant to help it purchase safety equipment. The $63,000 grant will go toward aircraft

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