"

Estimated reading time: 2 minutes, 30 seconds

Another Liberty Tax CFO Resigns

Nicholas Bates, Liberty TaxNicholas Bates, who has served as CFO of Liberty Tax Service since January, has resigned his position effective June 15. The tax services company, which has been in turmoil since its CEO John Hewitt was fired in September, the resignation will follow the anticipated delayed reporting of its quarter ended Oct. 31, 2017 and Jan. 31, 2018.

Meanwhle, Hewitt, who controls the company through his ownership of Class B shares, reappointed Thomas Herskovits to the board immediately. Herskovits served on the board from October 2015 until November 2017 when he was one of two directors Hewitt removed from the board. Herskovits fills a vacancy created when the company increased the number of Class B directors.

Bates had served as VP of finance at Liberty starting in October 2015. He replaced Kathleen Donovan, who resigned in November despite being one of four executives awarded retention bonuses after Hewitt’s termination.

Hewitt was fired after an investigation by an outside law firm said it appeared he had been heard having sex in his office and had favored women with whom he had romantic relationships. After Hewitt removed two board members, Donovan left while KPMG resigned as outside auditor, citing what it called the “tone at the top” of the company.

KMPG’s departure left the company unable to file the two quarterly financial reports and Liberty received notices of a possible delisting by Nasdaq. Last month, Liberty hired  Carr Riggs & Ingramas auditor and said it would file the overdue results as soon as practicable. 

Hewitt last fall had used his control of Class B shares to remove two members of the board of directors and replace them with allies. That triggered the departure of Donovan and other board members with Hewitt replacing the board members with allies. In February, the board fired Ed Brunot, who was been promoted from COO to CEO to replace Hewitt in September. Brunot was replaced by Nicole Ossenfort, who Hewitt had placed on the board. The new officers dumped the law firm the investigated Hewitt's behavior.

After other directors retired,  Liberty also received a notice of possible delisting because it did not have independent members on the board’s audit committee.

Herskovits was named chair of the compensation and Nominating and Corporate Governance Committees and was also appointed to the audit committee.

Bob Scott
Bob Scott has provided information to the tax and accounting community since 1991, first as technology editor of Accounting Today, and from 1997 through 2009 as editor of its sister publication, Accounting Technology. He is known throughout the industry for his depth of knowledge and for his high journalistic standards.  Scott has made frequent appearances as a speaker, moderator and panelist and events serving tax and accounting professionals. He  has a strong background in computer journalism as an editor with two former trade publications, Computer+Software News and MIS Week and spent several years with weekly and daily newspapers in Morris County New Jersey prior to that.  A graduate of Indiana University with a degree in journalism, Bob is a native of Madison, Ind
Read 3640 times
Rate this item
(0 votes)

Visit other PMG Sites:

Template Settings

Color

For each color, the params below will give default values
Tomato Green Blue Cyan Dark_Red Dark_Blue

Body

Background Color
Text Color

Header

Background Color

Footer

Select menu
Google Font
Body Font-size
Body Font-family
Direction
PMG360 is committed to protecting the privacy of the personal data we collect from our subscribers/agents/customers/exhibitors and sponsors. On May 25th, the European's GDPR policy will be enforced. Nothing is changing about your current settings or how your information is processed, however, we have made a few changes. We have updated our Privacy Policy and Cookie Policy to make it easier for you to understand what information we collect, how and why we collect it.