All articles by Tammy Whitehouse – Page 50
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Audit Voices Try to Calm Tensions on Evidence
Image: Leaders of the auditing world are calling for a truce in arguments between internal and external auditors over how much evidence external auditors should collect themselves while scrutinizing internal controls—and are calling on audit committees to intervene earlier to prevent such disputes. “Essential value will be lost if external ...
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Blog
Deloitte Advances Ucuzoglu to Lead Audit Practice
Image: After Deloitte advanced its head of audit to CEO in February, the firm has appointed Joseph Ucuzoglu chairman and CEO of subsidiary Deloitte & Touche. Ucuzoglu says he has a handful of near-term priorities that focus on innovating the audit practice to elevate audit quality. “We want to really ...
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Regulator Roasts Fannie Mae’s CAE Selection
The Federal Housing Finance Agency has provided a primer for corporate audit committees on how not to appoint and manage a chief audit executive. The FHFA’s inspector general has released a detailed report criticizing Fannie Mae’s selection of a chief audit executive in 2013, calling the audit committee’s process “far ...
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Franzel Reveals Progress in Internal Control Audits
Image: PCAOB member Jeanette Franzel said to expect improvements in the audit of internal control once 2014 audit inspections are published. “Preliminary results of the 2014 inspections indicate that some improvements have been seen in the area of auditing internal control,” Franzel said at the recent IIA annual conference. “That ...
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PCAOB Wraps 2013 Reports With Grant Thornton
The Public Company Accounting Oversight Board has published a tough report on Grant Thornton, finding problems in 20 of 36 audits inspected, a failure rate of 55 percent. Inspectors said the deficiencies were significant enough to conclude auditors did not obtain sufficient audit evidence before arriving at their conclusions. Details ...
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SEC Approves XBRL Updates for 2015 GAAP
The SEC has approved FASB’s XBRL taxonomy for 2015 U.S. Generally Accepted Accounting Principles, clearing the way for companies to rely on it as early 2015 filers approach their financial statement filing dates and XBRL submissions. According to FASB, the 2015 Taxonomy contains far fewer changes than prior years. More ...
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Consolidation Rule’s Consequences More Than You Expect
Image: A new rule on consolidating entities into a parent company’s financial statements might reach well beyond the original problem it aimed to fix. Financial reporting executives should prepare to take inventory of the entities in your enterprise and see how they may need to roll onto the balance sheet. ...
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Survey: Internal Audit Gaining Ground on Cyber-Risks
Image: Protiviti’s recent survey of more than 800 internal audit professionals reports that half of respondents said a cyber-security evaluation is included in their current audit plan, and 60 percent of those organizations use the National Institute of Standards and Technology cyber-security framework to evaluate risks. Protiviti EVP Brian Christensen ...
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Globally, Audit Inspectors Find Big Problems
U.S. audit regulators are not the only ones alarmed by high rates of busted audits. Around the globe, audit regulators who are members of the International Forum of Independent Audit Regulators compared notes and found nearly half of the audits they inspected in 2014 contained deficiencies that suggest the audit ...
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Gap Analysis: C-Suite Struggling to Define Risks
Image: Despite consensus that risk is a big deal—something companies should manage aggressively—recent academic research suggests that boardroom leaders focus on vastly different risks than compliance, audit, and risk executives do. “I wonder if there is a lack of understanding of the views of risk across the management team,” says ...
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Latest GRC Survey Shows Disconnect on Risk
Yet more findings—these from Grant Thornton—reveal that audit committees and chief audit executives differ on priorities. According to the survey, audit committees rank financial risk as most important for internal audit, followed by compliance, operational, and strategic risks. CAEs, however, give compliance risk top billing, followed by operational, financial, and ...
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FASB Proposes Targeted New Derivative Disclosures
FASB has issued a proposed update to accounting standards, with new disclosure requirements for financial instruments that contain separately presented embedded derivatives. Companies would be required to disclose the carrying amount, measurement attribute, and line item in both the balance sheet and income statement under certain circumstances.
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Survey: Audit Execs’ Cyber-Fears Run Deep
Image: Nearly 7 in 10 internal audit leaders participating in the IIA’s annual “Pulse of Internal Audit” survey ranked cyber-attacks and other security issues as a major concern, but only about one-third said they have high confidence in their organizations’ ability to address such risks. IIA President Richard Chambers says ...
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Shareholder Wins Bid to Amend Audit Committee Rules
A recent letter from the Securities and Exchange Commission denies Citigroup’s proposal to bar a person with a history of bankruptcy from joining the audit committee. The Commission said it disagrees with Citi that a shareholder proposal to pursue a bylaw amendment on audit committee service should be excluded from ...
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Where Internal Audit Can Help in Cyber-Security
Image: With yet another huge data breach hitting Corporate America—add insurance giant Anthem to the Hall of Shame—internal audit departments are trying to pinpoint what expertise they can bring to the company’s cyber-security risk assessment. Plenty, many audit executives say. “There are technical aspects of these projects, but regardless of ...
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Un-Convergence? Auditors Fret Over Possible Changes to Revenue Rule
Auditors are starting to worry about the implications of changes to the sweeping new standard on revenue recognition if U.S. and international rulemakers start debating new views and reaching different conclusions. Although both boards agreed in a recent joint meeting to consider changes, they didn’t agree on what those changes ...
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FASB Finalizes New Consolidation Guidance
Image: The Financial Accounting Standards Board has finished some targeted improvements to the accounting requirements around consolidations, or the rules around when a company must add another entity to its financial statements because it controls the business. “This new standard simplifies consolidation accounting by reducing the number of consolidation models, ...
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Dueling Thresholds Emerge on Going-Concern Warnings
Image: A new accounting standard meant to give investors more warning of when a company is in trouble could actually lead to less warning of trouble. Audit and accounting professionals are struggling over conflicting interpretations of “substantial doubt,” and the answer is not easy. “I’m not sure if the standard ...
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FASB, IASB Staff Call for Changes to Revenue Rules
Staff members of both the U.S. and international accounting rulemakers are recommending that their boards re-open their massive joint standard on revenue recognition to answer specific questions around implementation. The Joint Transition Resource Group has fielded nearly 40 issues that companies have encountered; FASB began to consider possible changes this ...
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Survey: Cyber-Risk Is Big, but Regulatory Risk Trumps Again
Image: In a recent poll by Protiviti and North Carolina State University of 277 board members and top executives, 67 percent identified regulatory risk as the top concern for the third time since the survey began. Protiviti managing director Jim DeLoach says, “The fact that this is so top of ...