After a long wait, the Securities and Exchange Commission is expected to announce today the appointments of three new board members to the five-member Public Company Accounting Oversight Board.

The SEC is expected to name John Huber, former director of the SEC's Division of Corporation Finance, Lewis Ferguson, former general counsel to the PCAOB, and Jay Hanson, national director of accounting for audit firm McGladrey & Pullen, to three seats that have been open at the PCAOB for more than a year. It's not clear whether one of those three will be appointed chairman, or whether that title will be granted to Daniel Goelzer, the acting chairman who has held down the fort since Mark Olson resigned in July 2009.

The SEC has dragged its feet on appointing PCAOB members at least in part because of a legal battle waged in the U.S. Supreme Court over the existence of the PCAOB and how the board is governed. Ferguson, in fact, was a key figure in the PCAOB defense of Free Enterprise Fund vs. PCAOB, settled in the PCAOB's favor in June 2010.

The board has continued functioning with Goelzer at the helm and both Goelzer and Steve Harris continuing to serve their normal terms. Two other seats are currently occupied by Bill Gradison and Charles Niemeier, both of whom have remained past their terms until replacements can be named. A fifth seat has been empty since Olson resigned. The lame-duck board has continued setting standards, inspecting audit firms, waging legal battles over international inspections, and defending the Constitutional challenge, all while waiting for new board members to be appointed.

Huber is a partner with the law firm Latham & Watkins. He spent 11 years at the SEC, serving as deputy director and director of Corporation Finance in the early 1980s. He was a key player during the development of the first permanent tender offer rules, the going-private rule, and Regulation S-X.

Ferguson is a partner with the law firm Gibson Dunn and was the first general counsel of the PCAOB. He was key to drafting the PCAOB's rules and regulations and auditing standards, including auditing standards for the audit of internal controls. In addition to his role with McGladrey, Hanson is a member of the Emerging Issues Task Force of the Financial Accounting Standards Board and chairman of the Financial Reporting Executive Committee of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants.