Accounting & Auditing

Accounting firms have suddenly found themselves fighting on two fronts to shield sensitive criticism of their work from public view—scrambling to fix their operations to please federal regulators, even as state regulators have begun asking for private information in those federal oversight reports. The Big 4 firms have been making numerous changes to their quality […]

As the Financial Accounting Standards Board churns away on revisions to its proposed standard on fair value measurement, the Board decided it will not expose its latest revisions for a new round of public comment but instead defer the intended effective date into 2008. FASB acknowledged its has heard several requests to re-expose the standard […]

The Financial Accounting Standards Board has decided to tackle four separate hedge accounting issues, including proper use of “the shortcut method,” to provide new guidance targeted at helping companies comply with complex derivatives rules. The Board stopped short, however, of agreeing to amend hedge accounting rules to allow a risk-based approach to fair value and […]

Companies looking for direction on how to correct cash flow classifications now have more definitive guidance, following the Securities and Exchange Commission’s decision last week to make a speech on the subject and accompanying slides more widely available. The SEC has posted on its Web site the text of a speech delivered by Associate Chief […]

To help steer the fair value ship, accounting rulemakers are reaching out to the readers of financial statements to find out if they like what they’ve seen so far in fair value accounting and where else it might be helpful in financial reporting. The Financial Accounting Standards Board and the International Accounting Standards Board have […]

A downloadable spreadsheet, compiled at the request of a Compliance Week subscriber, of audit and non-audit fees at three dozen large public companies. The spreadsheet compares fees paid in 2004 and 2005, including tax and “all other” fees.

In an unusual move, regulators have opened a back door to allow companies with erroneous cash flow classifications to sneak into compliance—without restating. What began as a trickle of interest in cash flow classifications is mounting into a full-scale movement to review cash flow statements across capital markets and to take advantage of a limited […]

American and international accounting rulemakers have proposed a timeline to make the necessary changes in standards to drop reconciliation reporting requirements for non-U.S. companies listed on U.S. exchanges. The Financial Accounting Standards Board and the International Accounting Standards Board issued a joint statement last week elaborating on their plans to fulfill the “Norwalk Agreement” of […]

Sure, a rose by any other name might smell as sweet—but anyone wanting to call a risk by another name should probably first check with internal audit. In the wake of corporate scandals that led to the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, investors and regulators alike have pressured Corporate America to disclose ever-more details about their enterprise risks. […]