Forensic Auditor, Business Advisor
Bruce M. Smith brings significant executive and financial experience to Bunning, Bowman, Ridley & Smith., LLP.
Mr. Smith has held key financial positions with merging as well as financial companies, in addition to being a small business advisor. He is a Certified Public Accountant, and a seasoned financial professional with over 25 years of progressive accounting responsibility. Mr. Smith is a graduate of California State University Chico with a Bachelors of Science in Business Administration with a concentration in Accounting. Upon graduation he started his career at Rosendin Electric, one of the largest electrical contractors in the United States, where he learned the significance of job-costing, budgeting and the impacts they have on the financial statements. Construction accounting is more complex and intricate then most standard aspects of accounting. Mr. Smith has earned his title at BBRS as the Construction Accounting Specialist.
Mr. Smith worked as a Cost-Accounting Manager for Intelli Corp., a technology company, where he was responsible for research and government grants. Utilizing his experience of cost-accounting, Mr. Smith designed a cost-accounting system capable of tracking costs for funded research and engineering contracts.
In 1990, Mr. Smith earned his CPA license while working for a local San Jose based CPA firm, Olson & Company. Mr. Smith worked on a number of accounts, providing “Big 4” service on a one-on-one scale, learning the benefits of personalized individual service has greatly impacted Mr. Smith’s business practices. Thusly, Mr. Smith became the Audit Manager where he led a team of three junior accountants, understanding how to convey the critical components of the balance sheet to the client’s other financial advisors, tracking the client’s exit strategy.
Mr. Smith rose from Controller to Chief Financial Officer of the U.S. parent company Contour Computer Services, a technology based company specializing in the repair of Unix workstations; ie. Sun Microsystems. Mr. Smith went abroad, expanding upon his CFO responsibilities, to become the company’s Managing Director of the European subsidiaries, in Scotland and the Netherlands.
After years of traveling around the country professionally, Bruce joined e-Congo in Los Gatos, as their Controller. E-Congo, a venture funded firm, packaging and offering e-commerce technology to business aggregators. Unfortunately the Dot Com bubble burst and e-Congo went down with it. This gave Mr. Smith great experience with working in a struggling company environment and reporting to the Board of Directors of timeliness of company dissolution. With the Dot Com era coming to a close, Mr. Smith decided to start his own consulting business due to the need of companies to cut cost by outsourcing their Controller and CFO needs. One of his clients, VexTel – a situation where the CFO outsourced the Controller function; review of the general ledger, preparation of financials for board packages and annual audit. Mr. Smith learned the benefits and problems of integrating a small engineering company into a conglomerate as part of the integration team when Intel purchased VxTel.
After years on his own he was approached by Bunning Bowman Ridley & Smith, LLP, to join their team as a Principal, providing key insight in design and implementation of financial reporting systems and management structured reports for growing companies. In January, 2005, Mr. Smith became a Capital Partner with the firm. His wealth of knowledge and expertise in the area of construction and auditing, Mr. Smith assumed the responsibilities as the firm’s Global Attest
