Robert Herz

Disclosure reform is one of the more intractable problems of corporate reporting. The SEC says it will work to move that issue forward this year, and inside, Compliance Week columnist Robert Herz offers his view on how to reinvigorate that project: Aim for a system of one corporate “evergreen” file of information, with real-time updates as material events happen after that.

Good disclosure begins with good standards. That has been challenging enough for financial reporting, and now investors want even more disclosure about important non-financial information. This week, Compliance Week columnist Robert Herz talks about the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (disclosure: he sits on SASB’s board), its effort to develop disclosure standards, and how they can be used to complement financial data and satisfy investors.

The Securities and Exchange Commission, the Financial Accounting Standards Board, and the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board have several formal and informal channels to compare notes and exchange ideas. Still, some wonder if a forum to discuss the reporting system as a whole and the long-term health of that system is needed. Inside, columnist Robert Herz looks at the push behind such a forum and one attempt to get it off the ground.

Just over a year ago the Securities and Exchange Commission announced the formation of a Financial Reporting and Audit Task Force to focus on strengthening and expanding the SEC’s abilities to identify and to prosecute instances of fraudulent, false, or misleading financial reporting by issuers and audit failures by independent auditors. The Task Force includes […]

Last month the Financial Accounting Standards Board and the International Accounting Standards Board jointly issued their long-awaited converged standards on revenue recognition. The FASB standard will take effect for U.S. public companies in 2017 and a year later for U.S. private companies. To someone who was heavily involved in the convergence effort, the issuance of […]

One of the bigger questions in accounting is if there should be different standards for different sets of companies. Last fall, I participated in a roundtable on the topic at New York University called, “Big GAAP vs. Little GAAP: Public Company and Private Company Reporting.” The roundtable focused on the pros and cons of having […]

New European Union audit regulations could affect a number of U.S. companies, particularly those with subsidiaries with listed securities in the European Union or those that have European banking or insurance operations. The impending EU rules include requirements for mandatory audit firm rotation, as well as restrictions on certain non-audit services and overall caps on […]

A new report finds some interesting trends on how companies are incorporating and using XBRL, the interactive digital tagging system for financial reporting. According to the survey, companies are bringing more of their XBRL process in house, although they continue to face several challenges with preparing XBRL filings and remain concerned about its usefulness compared […]