New guidance from Securities and Exchange Commission regulators sets limits on ways to determine the cost of stock options, though the new SEC chairman said that the report was "tentative."Chief accountant Donald Nicolaisen, who will leave the SEC in October, wrote in a statement that he had doubts as to whether the creation of a financial instrument to mimic employee stock options would be an accurate tool. And chief economist Chester Spatt wrote in a memo from the SEC's Office of Economic Analysis that such an instrument would face the inherent difficulty of reconciling market price with the fair value of stock options.

Environmentalism has arrived, and it's here to stay. And apparently the time to account for it has also come. The question is how.Many corporations have seen real, market-driven reasons to report on their environmental impact and sustainability. Consumers are paying attention. Investors are worried about what they're investing in and how environmental liabilities could impact their investments. In many countries, environmental regulation agencies are requiring some degree of reporting.

BearingPoint Inc., a spinoff of Big Four firm KPMG's former consulting business, said that the Securities and Exchange Commission has launched a formal investigation of the company.Along with providing an update to the progress of the company's plans to release its 2004 financial statements, BearingPoint said that the SEC has issued a formal order of investigation into the company. In a statement, BearingPoint said that it believes the matters involved are the same as the informal investigation that it announced in March.

The Securities and Exchange Commission released a request for information on interactive financial data as part of its ongoing efforts to make financial disclosure more useful and accessible to investors.

The Securities and Exchange Commission charged two accountants in connection with auditing the financial statements of bankrupt cable company Adelphia Communications Corp.

The Financial Accounting Standards Board said that it would assemble an investor task force -- a group comprised of top-level asset managers who will help advise the standard-setter on accounting issues relevant to Wall Street.

The International Auditing and Assurance Standards Board, a unit of the International Federation of Accountants, has approved a revised standard that the governing body says will enhance audit quality via stricter requirements for documentation.