Nortel Networks has agreed to pay $35 million to settle accounting fraud charges with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The Public Company Accounting Oversight Board has approved amendments that would reduce the frequency of inspections of accounting firms that do not regularly issue audit reports.

The risk assessment standards, FIN 48, valuation standards, convergence, the rewriting and codification of auditing and accounting standards, ethics interpretations, and other changes impacting the accounting and auditing regulatory landscape are being driven by a number of factors. But when push comes to shove on implementation, the burden squarely falls on the companies that these rules apply to, and on CPA firms’ A&A practice group and A&A practitioners.

The Treasury Department convened an initial meeting of its Advisory Committee on the Auditing Profession as the department aims to improve the competitiveness of the U.S. capital markets.

The European Union is putting the brakes on a push to converge accounting standards by delaying until the end of 2011 the need for companies to use international standards.

Barry Melancon has been leading the American Institute of CPAs since 1995. As president and CEO of the AICPA, he has been keeping busy on a number of fronts this past year. The Institute has been working with Congress on patent reform to keep tax strategy patents from taking hold. Another priority has been CPA mobility, so CPAs face fewer regulatory barriers when practicing across different states. Melancon has also been closely involved with the effort to move toward Extensible Business Reporting Language for financial statements, spearheading an initiative to assign data tags to generally accepted accounting principles. He was recently named co-vice chair of the Center for Audit Quality and to a position on the Treasury Department's new Advisory Committee on the Audit Profession. Melancon is also a member of the AICPA's delegation to the International Federation of Accountants. His accounting career began in 1979 at Bergeron & Co. in Louisiana. Before joining the AICPA, he served for eight years as executive director of the Society of Louisiana CPAs.

The American Institute of CPAs has begun a two- to three-year project to revise its auditing standards in an effort to achieve greater clarity.