Podcast Center
Video Center
Webcasts
Resource Center
Events
November 01, 2006 at 02:00 AM
Sarah Ball Teslik, who joined the CFP Board of Standards as CEO in 2004 and sparked many changes at the Board, has resigned from the Board to take the newly created position of senior VP of policy and governance at Apache Corp., an oil exploration and development company. In announcing the resignation on October 12, Board of Governors Chair Barton Francis noted Teslik’s “significant contributions,” particularly the way she helped “streamline our operations and strengthen the fiscal management of the Board.” In an interview shortly thereafter, Francis said it was his understanding that Apache had been wooing Teslik for years. He pooh-poohed any notion that the controversy over the proposed revisions to the Board’s Code of Ethics and Practice Standards was responsible in any way for her departure: “She got a deal offer from a great company.”
Francis said the Board of Governors was already negotiating with an unnamed interim CEO “who has experience with this kind of situation,” and that Teslik’s last Board meeting would be the regularly scheduled October 24 gathering.
It will be at that same Board meeting that the Governors will begin to address the responses to the proposed ethics revisions which prompted hundreds of responses from certificants and other interested parties. Among the comments was a strongly worded suggestion from the Financial Planning Association, dated September 25, that “these proposed revisions fail to enhance consumer protections or advance the profession of financial planning,” and that “that the core tenets of the Code and Practice Standards have been essentially eliminated or made optional in this proposal.” The letter, signed by FPA President Dan Moisand (available at www.investmentadvisor.com, in the table of contents for this issue), further charged that the proposals “constitute a complete reorganization of the Code with material changes that weaken, not strengthen, consumer protections,” concluding that the proposals “be withdrawn, redeveloped with a more inclusive process, and resubmitted to the public and certificants for further comment.”
