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News
Happy New Year—now get to work writing your company's annual report. That task requires all your skill at understanding useful and correct financial disclosure, so this week, Columnist Scott Taub offers his 10 tips on what makes for useful disclosure. And those tips include, he says, the idea that sometimes...
January 2, 2012
News
Staff members of the Securities and Exchange Commission revealed the top items they are paying close attention to during filing reviews, including exposure to the European debt crisis, pension accounting, and goodwill impairment. The SEC is looking carefully at how troubles abroad might affect companies and how they are explaining...
December 13, 2011
News
The SEC warned that if companies claim they are reinvesting foreign earnings outside the United States and avoiding the taxes to repatriate them, then they must provide more information to prove it and tell a consistent story to investors. "You have to be able to support that assertion," says Bob...
November 15, 2011
News
The Securities and Exchange Commission's latest burst of staff guidance takes aim at the tricky realm of disclosing cyber-security risks, with a five-part checklist of the sorts of disclosure the SEC expects to see in corporate filings. In other words, says Sanjay Shirodkar of the law firm DLA Piper, the...
October 25, 2011
Blog Post
Now that we're all settling back into the office, members of the compliance community have any number of serious issues looming in front of them this month. To Compliance Week Editor Matt Kelly's thinking, however, few have as much potential to change the compliance function's day-to-day workings as the Public...
September 6, 2011
News
The Public Company Accounting Oversight Board issued a concept release last week to consider views on overhauling the audit report. Among the ideas is compelling audit firms to provide a discussion and analysis of issues in the financial statements. "It's about how audits can provide investors more insightful assessments of...
June 28, 2011
News
Companies that keep offshore earnings abroad to avoid U.S. taxes have some explaining to do to satisfy not just tax authorities, but the Securities and Exchange Commission. The agency is scrutinizing such disclosures carefully these days, SEC staffer Mark Shannon said at the recent Compliance Week 2011 conference, to make...
June 14, 2011
Blog Post
The SEC's Division of Corporation Finance updated its reporting manual to revise topics including reporting status, financial statement requirements for multiple series registrants, income averaging, changes in accountants, and foreign business financial statements. The manual clarifies positions the staff took at the end of 2010. More details inside.
April 13, 2011
Blog Post
AT&T has decided to move to fair-value accounting to measure gains and losses in pensions and other retirement benefit assets, rather than to use the smoothing method that most companies use. The company will take a $2.7 billion non-cash charge to earnings as a result of the change.
January 18, 2011
Blog Post
The staff of the Securities and Exchange Commission has put financial institutions on notice that it is closely scrutinizing disclosures related to loan losses and will take action against delayed recognition.The staff of the Division of Corporation Finance sent one of its “Dear CFO” letters to an undisclosed number...
August 19, 2009
News
A list of databases available to subscribers of Compliance Week.
August 2, 2009
Blog Post
Amgen is trying a new tool to blunt some of the shareholder outrage over executive compensation: a survey.Tucked away on page 51 of the pharmaceutical giant’s proxy statement is mention of a page on Amgen’s website where shareholders can fill out a 10-question survey asking what they think of...
April 8, 2009
Opinion
I think I can safely say most of us are happy to see 2008 recede into history. While the economic crisis of last year was not primarily one of financial reporting, it did expose the shortcomings in our financial reporting structure. That exposure can (and should) lead to future improvements,...
January 27, 2009
News
A top Securities and Exchange Official gave companies more advice last week on drafting considerations for their upcoming financial reports, as well as an update of the SEC staff’s recent actions and a preview of initiatives that will be keeping the SEC—and U.S. issuers—busy in coming weeks.
November 25, 2008
Opinion
One has to wonder if the old Shakespearean saying “timing is all” will become a guiding factor in which direction the Securities and Exchange Commission will go with a new administration and Congress.
November 18, 2008
Opinion
I had planned to write a completely different column for this month—but, much like the Treasury Department, was inspired by recent events regarding the credit crisis to change course.
November 4, 2008
News
A forum intended to debate the future of the Securities and Exchange Commission turned last week into a gripe session about problems the SEC must tackle in the present, as Chairman Christopher Cox called for new powers to regulate the credit derivatives that have shattered Wall Street.
October 14, 2008
Blog Post
The Securities and Exchange Commission has updated its guidance to preparers of financial statements about what they should plan to say in Management Discussion and Analysis regarding their measurement of fair value, especially given continuing market turmoil.The SEC Division of Corporation Finance published a sample of the letter on...
September 19, 2008
Opinion
Significant public policy groups are jumping on a bandwagon to make corporate reporting more meaningful and useful and in a form that investors (institutional and individual alike) can digest in making better investment decisions. In the lead has been the Securities and Exchange Commission’s Advisory Committee on Improvements to Financial...
August 19, 2008
Opinion
The Securities and Exchange Commission’s Advisory Committee on Improvements to Financial Reporting has kept itself busy this spring. In February, it issued a progress report that summarized its potential recommendations to simplify financial reporting; in March and May, it held follow-up meetings to discuss those ideas more thoroughly. I’ve already...
May 28, 2008