Word: beans
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...tables have turned. Strengthened and emboldened by the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, which overhauled accounting responsibilities, the bean counters have taken off their kid gloves and snapped on rubber ones. With their federally issued mandate to look for trouble, accountants no longer have to take a company's word that its audit policies are legit. The accountants have the power to challenge corporate ledgers with impunity--and they're raking in money doing so. "Auditors and audit committees are now in the catbird seat," says Harvard Business School professor Jay Lorsch. Companies no longer feel free to dump their auditors...
...course, with the bean counters cashing in, the expense side of the ledger is going up for clients. The largest U.S. companies will typically spend more than $4.6 million each to comply with just one section of the law, according to Financial Executives International. And large companies complain that the get-tough accounting regimen is draining resources. Paul Schmidt, controller for General Motors, says GM's audit committee meets "six to seven times face to face and four to five times by teleconference" annually. The "bigger drain," says Schmidt, is that GM's chairman and CFO are spending more time...
...programs extolling the cancer- and heart-attack-preventing nutrients in rich, dark chocolate have elevated the confectionery to the status of red wine. It's good for you and you can be snobbish about it. Product placards in the top chocolate shops and caf?s now list where the cocoa bean was grown as well as the percentage of cocoa in each mouthwatering morsel. The latest varieties have that distinct Japanese twist: fillings range from the requisite green tea to more quirky innovations such as sansho (a combination of spices usually reserved for broiled eel) and yuzu (a citrus often used...
...Dark-chocolate addicts in Tokyo should take a hit of the 72%-cocoa signature praline at Pierre Marcolini, tel: (813) 5537 2047. If fillings are your focus, start at Ponto, tel: (813) 5414 2420, where red bean, green tea, black sesame, and soy bean powder chocolates decorated with seasonal motifs are on offer. Then head to Roppongi Hills, where Le Chocolate de H, tel: (813) 5772 0075, turns out exquisite red-pepper or gold-flecked champagne bonbons...
...closes her eyes, bending over a row of 12 white cups on a round metal table. Each contains coffee from the new harvest, toasted at 400ºF in a small roaster on the counter. Bolger shakes each cup and sniffs deeply. "I'm looking for defects," she says. "Underripe beans, overripe beans, sour flavors, mold. If even one bean out of 60 is flawed, you can tell...