Despite the Securities and Exchange Commission giving the okay for companies to voluntarily file reports using XBRL, and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. being poised to require quarterly call reports in the tagged data format, the United States still lags behind Europe, Asia and Australia in the adoption and implementation of the Extensible Business Reporting Language.Now more than five years old, XBRL is the financial reporting derivation of Extensible Mark-up Language, or XML - a framework that establishes individual "tags" for elements in structured documents, allowing specific elements to be immediately accessed and aggregated.

The President's Advisory Panel on Federal Tax Reform will hold its fourth meeting on Wednesday, March 16, at the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business Gleacher Center. Witnesses will provide perspectives on the impact of the tax laws on important taxpayer decisions and how the tax system treats investment alternatives. Panel I, on taxes and individual decisions, will hear testimony from James J. Heckman, a Nobel Laureate in Economics and professor of economics at the University of Chicago. Panel II will examine taxes and investment alternatives. Its witnesses include Brian Wesbury, chief investment strategist at Claymore Securities Inc.; Kathleen Kennedy, an associate professor of law and director of the Center for Tax Law and Employee Benefits at John Marshall Law School; Dr. Susan Dynarski, assistant professor of public policy at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University; and Armond Dinverno, principal and co-president of Balasa Dinverno & Foltz LLC. Panel III, on taxation of financial instruments, will hear David Weisbach, a professor of law at the University of Chicago; and Robert McDonald, a professor of finance at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University.

Adecco, the world's largest staffing firm, announced Tuesday that the Securities and Exchange Commission had closed its investigation into the Swiss company's accounting, with no recommendation for enforcement action. The probe was initiated after Adecco's uncovering of accounting irregularities at its North American unit early in 2004 caused it to delay financial reports. Swiss authorities launched a similar investigation. The firm's own independent examination found no fraud, but did report minor accounting control weaknesses at Adecco Staffing North America. Uncertainty about the company's financials cost its investors billions of dollars in market value, and led to the resignation of the chairman, finance chief and head of its North American operations. In June 2004, a new board of directors and new co-chairmen were appointed to try and restore confidence in the firm. Adecco's stock rose on news of the end of the SEC's probe, though it was still almost 20 percent below where it stood before the discovery of the accounting problems.

As part of a deal reached Monday with its regulator, mortgage giant Fannie Mae agreed to a number of corporate governance and management changes. The new practices, which supplement an earlier agreement meant to satisfy the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight regarding Fannie Mae's governance, include: * Separating the duties of the chairman and the chief executive officer; * Establishing a compliance and ethics office that can communicate directly with OFHEO; * Strengthening accounting rules; and, * Implementing policies to prevent the falsifying of signatures. Last year, OFHEO discovered significant problems with the mortgage giant's practices, including juggling the books to meet targets that triggered executive bonuses. The revelations led to the resignation of chairman and CEO Franklin Raines and chief financial officer Timothy Howard in December. The Securities and Exchange Commission said that from 2001 to mid-2004, Fannie Mae's accounting practices didn't comply with the requirements related to accounting for deferred purchase price adjustments and for derivatives and hedging activities, and advised the company that it should, among other things, restate its financial statements to eliminate the use of hedge accounting. In February, SEC chief accountant Donald Nicolaisen announced that the commission would conduct a thorough, top-down examination of the mortgage financing concern.

Accounting irregularities have brought a flurry of troubles down on Delphi Corp., the world's largest maker of auto parts, leading to the need for a $200-plus million restatement and a host of corporate changes, including the departure of its chief financial officer. In a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the company, based here, said that it had overstated its cash flow for 2000 by about $200 million due to improper accounting for prior transactions involving the receipt of rebates, credits and lump-sum payments, as well as certain off-balance sheet transactions. It also said that improper accounting regarding rebate transactions lead to a $61 million overstatement of income in 2001. The company discovered the irregularities in an ongoing investigation that was prompted by an SEC inquiry last July. Following the filing, Delphi's board expressed a lack of confidence in vice chairman and chief financial officer Alan Dawes; he resigned last Friday. Chief accountant and controller Paul Free also resigned, and John Blahnik, vice president of treasury, mergers and acquisitions, and new markets, was re-assigned to a lesser position. Chief accounting officer and controller John D. Sheehan is acting as CFO for now, reporting to chairman and chief executive J.T. Battenberg, who will retire later this year. The company's stock suffered this week as a result of the news, and on Tuesday Moody's cut Delphi's debt rating to junk. Also on Tuesday, the company announced that it would cut health benefits for retirees by dropping coverage once they are eligible for Medicare, starting in 2007. The cuts could save the company half a billion dollars over time.

Fast-food titan McDonald's Corp. said that it would pare down its equity-based compensation, such as stock options, and replace it in some cases with cash-based incentives, The Wall Street Journal reported. In its annual report, the global burger chain said that its decision stemmed in part from the options expensing rule adopted by the Financial Accounting Standards Board in December. McDonald's said that it will start complying with the options-expensing mandate during the current first quarter, and added that it would have to restate its financial results from some prior periods to reflect the previously unrecognized compensation expense.

The Securities and Exchange Commission unanimously approved the 2005 budget for the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board, which requested $137 million for the body charged with policing the accounting profession. Initially, the board submitted a 2005 budget request of $152.5 million, a dramatic increase from the $103 million it had been allocated in 2004. However, when its hiring goals for 2004 fell short, it slashed that request by roughly 15 percent. The SEC approval, however, did not come without controversy, as two commissioners -- Paul Atkins and Cynthia Glassman -- reportedly ignored the objections of their boss, SEC Chairman William Donaldson, and extended an invitation to PCAOB Chairman William McDonough to attend the budget meeting. An invitation was also extended to Robert Herz, chairman of the Financial Accounting Standards Board. Neither attended the meeting. Last year's approval of the PCAOB budget had been done behind closed doors.