All Accounting & Auditing articles – Page 102
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Blog
EY Settles Lehman Allegations for $10 Million
Image: New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman has announced a $10 million settlement with EY over its role in auditing Lehman Brothers financial statements, which hid tens of billions in leverage before collapsing in 2008. Schneiderman says the $10 million will be distributed as restitution to Lehman Brothers investors. More ...
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Blog
FERF Updates Latest Fraud Defense Tactics
The Financial Executives Research Foundation has put some fresh research and analysis to the fraud conundrum, offering companies some new insights on how to address an old problem. FERF says fraud risk is growing rather than declining for companies, despite plenty of regulatory and legislative efforts to the contrary. More ...
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Article
Audit Inspections: Improvement? Maybe. Costs? Yes.
Image: Five years of increasingly rigorous PCAOB inspections have driven audit firms to improve their efforts at scrutinizing corporate financial statements and internal control. Companies receiving that pressure say the heightened scrutiny is clear; the question is whether it is making audits better, or just bigger and more expensive. “Companies ...
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Blog
Podcast: How Falling Oil Prices Affect MD&A, Accounting
In our latest podcast, we talk to Elizabeth Paul at PwC about what companies affected by falling fuel prices must consider. That includes ensuring the adequacy of Management Discussion & Analysis disclosures; explaining the extent that increased profits are due to better margins rather than higher revenue; and, for the ...
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Blog
Report: Majority Adopt New COSO Framework
With more than 3,000 filings collected through early April, three-fourths of publicly traded companies have disclosed that they have adopted the 2013 COSO internal control framework, with the rest either remaining on the 1992 framework or not disclosing what framework they followed, according to a study published by Protiviti.
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Blog
Study Shows No Better Reporting After Auditors Cut Tax Services
U.S. auditor independence rules targeted at tax work have done nothing to improve financial reporting quality, according to new academic research out of Singapore. The study found a big shift in non-audit services provided by audit firms, leading to a significant drop in auditor-provided tax services, especially among firms that ...
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Blog
PCC Seeks Nominations for New Chair; Members
Private Company Council Chairman Billy Atkinson this week announced that he will not seek a second term as head of the group. As a result, the Financial Accounting Foundation Board of Trustees issued a request for nominations for candidates to succeed Atkinson next January and to fill other potential vacancies ...
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Blog
FASB Simplifies Presentation of Debt Issuance Costs
FASB has approved a measure to revise the presentation of debt issuance costs. Financial statement preparers told the board that existing rules establishing different balance sheet presentation requirements were unnecessarily complicated. FASB now says companies should treat debt issuance costs as they do debt discounts in the balance sheet, deducting ...
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Blog
FASB Shifts Gears on Cash-Flow Classification Issues
Image: FASB has asked its Emerging Issues Task Force to dig into nine specific cash-flow issues to see if it can suggest some changes to existing guidance to make this area of accounting more straightforward. “We’re going to continue with the project, but change the dynamic,” said FASB Chairman Russ ...
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Article
PCAOB Inspection Data: Shifting Standards, Shifting Insights
Image: If you want to be panicky or cynical about audit firms’ performance, citing failure rates in PCAOB inspection reports is a great way to do it. The truth is more complex. In Part II of our series looking at PCAOB inspection data, we delve into how inspections have changed ...
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Blog
Sovos Compliance and ShipCompliant Combine
Sovos Compliance, a tax compliance and reporting provider, has acquired Boulder-based ShipCompliant, a compliance and tax solution provider for the beverage alcohol market.
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Blog
Workiva Adds New Feature to Wdesk for Sarbanes-Oxley Compliance
Workiva, creator of the Wdesk cloud-based productivity platform for business data collaboration and reporting, this week introduced a new feature called Evidence Management for Wdesk that significantly improves how companies document and test their internal controls over financial reporting required by the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. Details inside.
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Resource
e-Book: The Evolving Role of Internal Audit
Corporations have seen an explosion in the number, type, and complexity of risks facing them today. Internal auditors are crucial players helping companies to manage those risks, which means the complexity of their role has exploded in the last decade, too. This e-Book, produced by Compliance Week in cooperation with ...
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Blog
PCAOB Routs Nevada Firm Where Beckstead Landed
The PCAOB has thrown the book at a small Nevada audit firm for a long list of audit violations, including a suspension for Brad Beckstead, former partner with Beckstead and Watts. Beckstead challenged audit inspections and the existence of the PCAOB before the U.S. Supreme Court, which has created uncertainty ...
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Blog
Accounting-Related Class-Action Lawsuits Jump in 2014
Image: A Cornerstone Research report says securities class-action filings involving allegations of accounting improprieties jumped sharply from 47 in 2013 to 69 in 2014. Senior adviser Laura Simmons said Cornerstone expected the SEC’s increased focus on financial reporting issues might lead to an increase in class actions with these issues. ...
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Blog
FASB Votes for One-Year Deferral on Revenue Recognition
Image: FASB will propose a one-year delay in the effective date of its new revenue recognition standard, while allowing adoption of the original effective date for companies ready to move forward. FASB member Daryl Buck, though initially skeptical of a delay, said, “It would be very difficult to expect [media ...
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Blog
Sustainability Group Issues Standards for Resource Transformation Sector
The Sustainability Accounting Standards Board issued its latest set of standards, this time for companies in the resource transformation sector to help them improve disclosure of environmental, social, and governance risks. The standards represent the seventh set in a planned industry-focused series of sustainability standards. Details inside.
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Blog
Setting Objectives for Risk Avoidance, Value Creation
One criticism of the Three Lines of Defense model is that it dwells too much on risk mitigation, and too little on risk opportunity. If you connect the Three Lines model to the COSO framework for internal control, however, a more elegant appreciation of risk management emerges. Inside, columnist Jose ...
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Blog
PCAOB Reorganizes Auditing Standards by Topic
The PCAOB is reorganizing its audit standards, integrating standards the board wrote with historical standards it adopted on an interim basis under Sarbanes-Oxley. “The standards will be organized by topics that generally follow the flow of the audit process, making their use easier and more efficient for auditors,” said PCAOB ...
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Article
PCAOB Inspection Reports at 5: What Can We Learn
The compliance and audit community have pored over PCAOB inspection data on audit firms for five years now. What does the data tell us, really? This week Compliance Week begins a special series looking at the insights that the inspection process can give—starting with how much value the disclosure of ...