We offer confidential consulting and training and advisory services to firms, organizations, and individuals in several broad areas of management, including: (1) managerial control; (2) valuation and risk analysis; (3) and the integration of control and risk management.

  1. Managerial control is a very broad practice that encompasses almost all aspects of finance, accounting, and strategy.  It includes decision making; cost and information system design; incentives; and performance management and measurement.
  2. Valuation and uncertainty (risk) analysis focuses on pricing and risk model development and validation; scenario & stress testing development and analysis; counterparty credit risk; and hedging advisory services.
  3. Integration of managerial control and risk management for both industrial and financial organizations.  This is a new initiative to address a serious shortcoming within our economy.  Industrial firms need to find better ways to benefit from their risky environments rather than solely trying to insulate themselves.  Financial firms must address control issues, particularly incentive issues, and especially performance measurement issues, within their operations as a way to mitigate potential disasters and reduce the magnitude of their feast-to-famine cycles.

In addition, we design and development web sites and web-based management information systems for firms and organizations.

Our Blog posts discuss current affairs and news articles, and anything else that amuses, annoys, or interests us. Some are silly, but most are serious, and all illustrate our thinking and inform about our perspective and us: WYSIWYG. If you don’t like our posts, you won’t like us.

We have written extensively on the ongoing financial crisis and government bailout and have proposed a reasonable, alternative private solution involving a few simple changes in the federal tax code.

Many posts provide examples of concepts presented in our essays.  If you’re interested in our control-related essays and blog posts, we strongly encourage readers to start with Our Control Framework.  It defines many terms in the technical way that we use them, which may be different than how the words are used within one’s own firm or organization. Those interested in markets and risk management should start with Uncertainty Management, which explains our philosophy.

Besides the management and economic consulting services, we also design web sites—as content management systems—and build what we call qualitative, web-accessible, management information systems.

Our web design business focuses on medium and small businesses and organizations, primarily in—but not limited to—Western Pennsylvania and the Pittsburgh region, and Wexford, PA, in particular.  Now that our inability to draw is no longer a hindrance to perform design work, we’re able to show our creative side.

Here are a few sites that we’ve developed and designed pro bono: St. Alphonsus Church, St. Alphonsus Athletic Association, and the Oakhaven Subdivision.  We can point interested parties to client sites, too, but to protect their privacy we keep those links hidden.

As time permits, we will add more page content to our site, but fortunately we have been very busy.  Lately, we’ve been posting essays with the other blog material, e.g., our many entries on risk neutral models and “implied” default rates rather than as separate pages (where they belong).

The About pages provide more information about us. Please call Andy at 412.779.9028 or use our contact form to request more information.  Friends of the site and the firm are welcome to register and comment on our posts or essays.