Audit & Accounting

U.S. Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty has authored a memo revising the Department of Justice’s guidelines for federal prosecutors looking to press charges against white-collar criminals.

After a federal judge denied a request from Jeffrey Skilling to remain free on bond pending an appeal, the former Enron chief executive reported to a low-security federal prison in Minnesota Wednesday.

The Securities and Exchange Commission stopped well short of proposing exemptions from the Sarbanes-Oxley Act’s internal control provisions that many small companies had loudly lobbied for at the panel’s Wednesday meeting.Under the guidance proposed by the SEC, executives would evaluate the design of only those financial controls that might carry the risk of having a material impact on financial statements.

Aside from identifying a number of nuances in last year’s tax law changes and interpreting the effects of congressional leadership turnover, a new tax guide should help midsized business owners monitor a series of federal tax trends for 2007.Published by national CPA firm RSM McGladrey, the “2006 Tax Planning Guide” includes a Top 10 list of tax-planning strategies for midsized companies and issues owners should watch for on the horizon.

Grant Thornton International announced that revenues for its worldwide member firms were up 12 percent, to $2.8 billion, for the fiscal year ending Sept. 30.

The U.S. Court of Appeals in New Orleans has given a reprieve to Enron’s former chief executive, who was due to report to prison yesterday and begin serving a 24-year sentence.The court’s stay of the order will keep Jeffrey Skilling, 53, out of the low-security Federal Correctional Institution in Waseca, Minn., for a while longer. He was convicted in May on securities fraud and conspiracy charges, related to his role in the accounting fraud that led to the company’s historic collapse.

The Securities and Exchange Commission plans to address the Sarbanes-Oxley compliance burden by scaling-back testing and documentation requirements for smaller public companies.

A senior accountant at PNC Financial Services Group Inc. and a former Ernst and Young partner have agreed to settle Securities and Exchange Commission charges that they played a role in PNC filing reports that inflated the company’s 2001 earnings.

A federal banking regulator has fined Grant Thornton LLP $300,000 for “reckless conduct” in performing a 1998 audit of the failed First National Bank of Keystone.

A proposal from the Financial Accounting Standards Board would require companies to provide more information about the effects of derivative and hedging activities on financial statements.