Companies continue to face business challenges arising from the financial crisis and the recession and from the changing regulatory landscape and new corporate governance requirements stemming from the Dodd-Frank Act. Major new accounting standards and financial reporting requirements can also pose significant challenges for companies. While these new standards can bring about improvements in accounting and financial reporting, they can also be costly to implement, and the resulting changes in reported earnings and financial position can affect debt covenants and other contractual arrangements, compensation plans, and business practices.
Certainly, over the last decade we've seen many changes in the accounting ...