Audit & Accounting

KPMG International reported that member firms posted combined revenues of $16.9 billion for the 2006 fiscal year, a 7.6 percent gain in U.S. dollars over the prior year.

The BDO International network announced its global revenues for the fiscal year ending September 2006 increased to $3.9 billion in U.S. dollars, an increase of 17 percent from last year.

The Committee on Capital Markets Regulation, which has the support of Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, released a report urging legislators to consider overhauling the country’s enforcement policies and litigation system.

Scott Taub, the longest serving of the Securities and Exchange Commission’s deputy chief accountants, will leave the commission later this year.Taub, 38, had served as acting chief accountant for nine months beginning in late 2005 until Conrad Hewitt started in the position in mid-August. Prior to serving as a deputy, Taub spent most of career with Arthur Andersen and as a professional accounting fellow in the Office of the Chief Accountant between 1999 and 2001. He returned to the office in September 2002.

A report released by Huron Consulting Group found that the number of accountants on audit committees has doubled over the last four years. In its research, however, the group found six out of 10 companies did not have at least one accountant on its audit committee in 2005.

Sometimes, I feel bad for Comptroller General David Walker and his staff at the Government Accountability Office.I imagine it’s the same sort of sadness most people feel for the geeky guys in high school comedies. You know, the good guys who never get the girl, but are there throughout the course of the plotline, providing some sort of insight into the inner workings of the social machination that exists all around them.

The two organizations that police stock brokers and others working in the securities industry will form a new, single self-regulatory body.

With the close of 2006 approaching, we asked industry leaders to share their ideas of what the accounting profession will look like in five years: What will be its major concerns? Challenges? Hot new service areas? What will shape will the firm landscape have taken?In the final part of the series, among others, managing director of research for research firm Glass Lewis & Co. Lynn Turner, Information Technology Group Inc. principal David Cieslak and Internal Federation of Accountants chief executive Ian Ball take a stab at forecasting what the future holds for the profession. The managing partner of Beckstead and Watts, Brad Beckstead, the firm involved in the legal challenge over the constitutionality of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board, wraps things up.

The Public Company Accounting Oversight Board will meet Thursday, Nov. 30, to consider adoption of its budget for the 2007 fiscal year.As outlined under the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, the board -- which sets its fiscal year according to the calendar -- must set a budget for the upcoming year no later than one month before the end of the current fiscal year. Once approved by the board, the budget will be submitted to the Securities and Exchange Commission for approval.

After years of sounding the fiscal imbalance bell, Comptroller General David Walker, the head of the Government Accountability Office, has committed a to-do list to paper for the 110th Congress.In a letter dated Nov. 17, Walker outlines a number of areas his federal watchdog agency, says the newly-elected politicians should consider in getting a “jump-start” on legislative planning.