Accounting & Auditing

A group of Canada’s provincial securities regulators have put Canadian-listed companies on notice that they’re displeased with a spot check recently performed to determine whether companies are in compliance with audit rules. The staff of regulatory authorities in five provinces reviewed a sample of 95 issuers from across Canada to determine how well they complied […]

Quieting another ripple of panic around the implementation of stock option expensing, the Financial Accounting Standards Board proposed new guidance last week that relaxes language on how to account for options that are granted with a cash-settlement feature attached. Companies had worried that FASB’s Statement No. 123R, the controversial stock-option expensing rule that went into […]

The Institute of Management Accountants is developing a control framework that it hopes will rival the widely accepted COSO framework for helping companies establish an internal control environment to comply with Sarbanes-Oxley requirements. THE FRAMEWORK The Institute of Management Accountants recently announced plans to expose for comment a “management centric” risk and control assessment framework […]

Canada, the United States’ largest and most important trading partner, has decided to adopt International Financial Reporting Standards for its public companies—yet another feather for the fast-growing accounting standard, and a rebuke to U.S.-style Generally Accepted Accounting Principles. Canada’s Accounting Standards Board said last week it will pursue separate strategies for public companies, private companies […]

Downloadable spreadsheet of the changes in certifying accountants at public companies during 2005. Includes new auditor, departing auditor, and reason for depature.

Accounting firms got their first look last week at proposed new rules that would govern how accountants can serve their public company audit clients—no contingent fees, no tax shelters for audit clients, and no personal tax services for officers with financial oversight responsibility. The Public Company Accounting Oversight Board issued its proposed ethics rules following […]

Derailed by its international counterpart’s change of course, the Financial Accounting Standards Board has put off a planned controversial proposal that would have required companies to present all income in a single statement of comprehensive income. The plan is not dead, however, but placed on hold pending further board determinations about how it and the […]

Accounting ethics professionals are still open for comments through Dec. 15 on their proposed guidance for how auditors should seek liability protections in private company audits without compromising their independence. The Professional Ethics Executive Committee of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants will meet in late January to finalize the guidance, said Lisa A. […]