Igor Kostioutchenko is a seasoned professional with an impressive array of credentials, including CPA, CIA, CFE, and CBV. As a partner at Kostioutchenko and Patel CPAs Professional Corporation, a boutique public accounting firm in Toronto, Igor leverages his extensive experience to provide a comprehensive suite of services to clients, ranging from historical financial reporting to forward-looking valuations, mergers and acquisitions, and litigation support. The CBV designation was a pivotal step that broadened his expertise and allowed him to offer value-added advisory services, particularly to small and medium-sized enterprises.
Before diving full-time into his accounting career, Igor served as a Combat Engineer in the Canadian Armed Forces, where he developed leadership, crisis management, and communication skills that continue to serve him in his professional life. Igor remains actively involved with his former regiment and supports soldiers transitioning into professional services careers.
Here are some highlights from our conversation:
How has the CBV designation supported your career development?
Having spent a substantial amount of my career focused on leading historical financial reporting and analyzing already-consummated transactions, turning my attention to future-oriented information required a shift in perspective along with a new skillset. Obtaining the CBV designation was pivotal in expanding my presence (and reach) to include advising on mergers and acquisitions, litigation support, contemplated transactions, public market offerings, and a variety of other real-time dilemmas.
As a partner of Kostioutchenko and Patel, CPAs, Professional Corporation, a boutique public accounting firm in Toronto, clients often consult with us on challenges that they expect into the future. Having both the knowledge and the regulatory authority to be able to advise those clients on addressing their valuation-related needs has resulted in an exciting new service line for our firm. As a boutique firm, having the ability to provide similar services to Small and Medium Sized Enterprises (“SMEs”) that their larger counterparts receive, has been a significant driver of client interest.
Ultimately, from a career perspective, the CBV designation has rounded out my professional profile in such a way that I’m now fully equipped to address the full complement of client needs, be they historically oriented (assurance and tax), present-day (valuations, litigation support, etc.), or future-focused (forecasting, modelling, etc.). The most exciting client engagements often have elements of all three of these areas and also happen to be where my firm can now provide the most amount of value.
Can you share a particularly challenging yet interesting valuation analysis that made you realize you had chosen the right career path?
Shortly after obtaining the CBV designation, our team received a referral from a bank to perform a valuation for an acquisition financing arrangement. The engagement started as a routine calculation of value with a straightforward fact pattern.
Everything began to change as we continued conversations with the stakeholders. The more that I was able to educate them on a CBV’s areas of expertise, the more they were interested in expanding the scope of services that our firm was going to be providing.
Subsequent expansions of scope led to a very complicated set of deliverables that included a report on the quality of earnings, calculations of anticipated closing results, the challenging of assumptions in forecasts and models, analyses of agreements and clauses relevant to the valuation, and other tests and reports on transaction particulars. What started with a simple request had turned into a multi-month, full valuation team, collaborative engagement with a complex set of deadlines and reporting obligations.
At the conclusion of the engagement, in addition to receiving very positive feedback from the stakeholder group, I genuinely felt that our firm had substantially contributed to the closing of the transaction. The best feeling was being able to inform the stakeholder group as to the numerous “mission-critical” activities and analyses that CBVs could participate in and contribute to. This realization of being so pivotal to a transaction was exactly the point that I realized how powerful the CBV designation is.
What differences do you see in your current role as compared to your previous role?
My area of focus has shifted dramatically since obtaining the CBV designation. Most noticeably, the conversations I have with prospective and existing clients are focusing on current events and prospects for their businesses. More than ever, they now rely on my expertise to help guide strategic decisions, determine their level of participation in the broader marketplace, and obtain advice on challenges that they are experiencing today. This is a marked shift from reporting on historical results and completing compliance engagement work.
My original objective in pursuing my CBV was to round out my expertise and obtain the education and qualifications necessary to provide clients with a 360-degree approach to their situations. In today’s interconnected and expansive economy, forward-looking advice is sought after by an ever-increasing number of clients. Having the ability to work with clients in the SME setting and provide them with this advice has substantially increased my overall satisfaction with my role.
Do you have any tips for people looking to become a CBV?
I was in a, somewhat, unique position when I embarked upon obtaining my CBV. Despite participating in numerous valuations-related engagements over the course of my career, I did not decide to pursue the CBV until twelve years post-graduation. Only mid-way into my career did I realize that this was a step that I needed to take to truly focus on the type of work that I wanted to do into the future.
Like any other course (aside from the regimented testing, of course), you get out of it what you put into it. I was in a fortunate place in terms of my career progression where I could dedicate additional time to diving deeper into the material and accessing supplementary sources and information. I could not have driven the service line expansion without having put that effort forward right from the very start.
The best advice I have is for those that are debating whether to embark on their designation journey at all. My suggestion is that you sign up, do the first module, and see how you like it. Dividing the education piece into manageable chunks (especially for those well into their career) and learning at your own pace worked very well for me. Before I knew it, the courses had me hooked.
#FunFact
A unique aspect of my background is that at a very young age I enlisted into the Canadian Armed Forces as a Combat Engineer. I completed several trade courses, participated in exciting taskings, and picked up a multitude of skills before diving full-time into post-secondary education. I stayed in the Army Reserve for many years after graduating university and received the Canadian Forces’ Decoration for my service record.
I credit a great many of my abilities such as: leadership, organization, work ethic, communication, crisis management and perseverance to my time in the Canadian Forces. In years of networking with like-minded professionals in our space, I am surprised to have yet to meet anyone with a comparable experience despite the tangible benefits that military service has to offer.
I continue to maintain my connection with my former regiment as well as philanthropically support today’s soldiers in their career growth – specifically those interested in pursuing professional services.