Last week, the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board rejected its first audit firm, announcing it had “disapproved” the application of James C. Marshall PC. The Scottsdale, Ariz.-based firm will no longer be able to audit public company clients. According to the PCAOB’s notice, Marshall failed to respond to deficiencies identified in its audit work, and […]
Accounting & Auditing
Posted inAccounting & Auditing
PCAOB’s Goelzer Outlines Oversight Of Foreign Auditors
At a recent speech at the inaugural Baker & McKenzie International Law Lecture Series at Georgetown University, former SEC general counsel and current PCAOB member Daniel Goelzer outlined the Board’s “sliding scale” approach to working with international regulatory bodies to oversee foreign accounting firms. The PCAOB doesn’t exempt foreign firms from registering, but it does […]
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Charlotte Newspaper Quantifies Audit Fee Increase
SAMPLING OF INCREASE Company Increase Carlisle Cos. 127.0% SPX Corp. 87.3% Piedmont Natural Gas 81.8% Transbotics 79.8% BB&T Corp 56.9% First Charter 37.5% MedCath Corp. 34.9% Sonic Automotive 16.4% CT Communications 12.8% Wachovia 7.2% From Charlotte Business Journal View A Printable Version Of The Original Story The Charlotte Business Journal is one of the first […]
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Companies Taking Longer Time To Close Their Books
Here’s proof that many companies will likely welcome the SOX 404 delay: it’s taking them longer to close their books. Roth According to research conducted by The Hackett Group, a division of $132 million benchmarking firm Answerthink, companies now take 5.5 days to close their books each month, up five percent from last year. According […]
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Restatements Due To Accounting Errors Decline In 2003
323 publicly traded companies filed restatements due to accounting errors last year, down from 330 similar restatements in 2002. According to a recent study conducted by Chicago’s Huron Consulting Group, the number one reason for the errors was mistakes in calculating reserves and contingencies. In previous years, revenue recognition was the leading cause. Though the […]
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Certifying Internal Controls — A Trap for the Unwary?
A great deal of frenzy currently surrounds the Sarbanes-Oxley requirement that public companies assess, and their outside auditors attest to, the effectiveness of the company’s internal controls. To paraphrase Epicetus, “[w]hat concerns me is not the way things are, but rather the way people think things are.” Most companies seem to be adopting one of […]
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Non-Audit Services Comprised One-Third Of Fees
A Compliance Week analysis of January 2004 filings shows that average non-audit fees comprised 33.6 percent of payments to auditors. The average non-audit fee paid was more than $860,000.
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Accounting Firms Spurn Public Clients; What’s The Impact?
A growing number of accounting firms are choosing to get out of the business of providing auditing work for publicly traded companies. In the past few months alone, at least four regional accounting firms have taken this route. They include Minneapolis-based Larson Allen, the 18th largest accounting firm, according to Bowman’s Accounting Reports. The other […]
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Ex-SEC Associate Chief Accountant Talks About Auditor Independence
Samuel L. Burke is the former associate chief accountant for the SEC, where he spent three years involved in resolving auditing and independence issues and participating in a variety of rulemaking projects, including the rules strengthening auditor independence that became effective March 31, 2003. Last July, Burke joined PricewaterhouseCoopers as a partner in its national […]