Accounting
Accounting News & Professional Insight
Accounting Today delivers news, rankings, thought leadership, and analysis for accounting professionals so they can navigate change in standards, firm strategy, technology adoption, talent, and the overall business environment.
Accounting professionals are facing rapid transformation, including shifting professional standards, demographic change, technology disruption, practice consolidation, and changing expectations for advisory services. Our coverage surfaces these strategic dynamics and provides insights and analysis for firms, leaders, and the accounting profession.
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The Financial Accounting Standards Board has voted to propose changes to a derivatives rule issued earlier this year affecting the financial statements of asset-backed and mortgage-backed securities investors.The proposal would affect FASB Statement No. 155, “Accounting for Certain Hybrid Financial Instruments,” and allow companies not to account for embedded derivatives that are associated with prepayment risks. Community banks, insurance companies and others may be exempted from having to recognize interest-rate-driven gains and losses on their income statements. Many of those groups had said without such an exemption, their earnings might be more volatile.
October 26 -
In response to a senator’s inquiry, the Government Accountability Office will review the operations of the Securities and Exchange Commission’s enforcement division and compliance department.
October 26 -
A federal panel is recommending changes to governmental accounting that would require the cost of future Social Security and Medicare payments to be accounted for year-by-year as workers accumulate entitlements.
October 24 -
The Securities and Exchange Commission has settled civil fraud charges against the former chief financial officer of Comverse Technology Inc., part of a case that is one of the agency’s first involving options backdating.
October 24 -
An International Federation of Accountants board has issued an exposure draft of a proposed standard, “Impairment of Cash-Generating Assets.”
October 22 -
Former U.S. Treasury secretary and Harvard University president Lawrence H. Summers will join New York hedge fund firm D.E. Shaw & Co. as a part-time managing director."Larry is an enormously gifted economist and has made major contributions as a researcher, a public servant and an academic leader," David Shaw, chairman of the $25-billion fund manager, said in a statement.
October 22 -
The Securities and Exchange Commission announced that thousands of individual investors who made financial claims in the wake of the $11 billion WorldCom accounting fraud will soon receive up to $150 million from an SEC fund set up to help compensate investors for their losses.
October 22