Audit & Accounting

A House subcommittee held hearings Wednesday in which they questioned the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board’s recent proposal for mandatory audit firm rotation, along with the PCAOB’s push to make disciplinary proceedings against auditors public.

The Securities and Exchange Commission said Wednesday that the U.S. GAAP 2012 Taxonomy is now available for use in the SEC’s EDGAR online database, along with the Mutual Fund Risk/Return Summary 2012.

Like Katniss Everdeen, the young heroine of the hit movie “The Hunger Games,” auditing leaders are facing their own test of survival.

The second day of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board’s two-day public meeting on its proposal for mandatory audit firm rotation had its share of drama, with accusations that the Big Four firms are monopolizing the audit market at the expense of minorities, and a demand from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce that the PCAOB shelve the proposal because of “mission creep.”

A lawsuit from New York's attorney general accusing accounting firm Ernst & Young LLP of helping to hide financial problems at Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. has been sent from federal court to the New York state court where it was originally filed.

Deloitte said on Thursday it had quit as auditor for Chinese milk formula products maker Daqing Dairy Holdings Ltd hours after its shares were suspended, the accounting firm's second resignation from a Hong Kong-listed Chinese company in days.

Firm News -- March 23

The Public Company Accounting Oversight Board heard testimony from a series of high-profile auditing experts on the advantages and disadvantages of requiring companies to rotate their auditing firms on a regular basis.

The Financial Accounting Standards Board has added a new item to its agenda to revise the accounting standards for repurchase agreements in response to the problems that led to the collapse of MF Global.

The International Federation of Accountants has published a paper calling for enhanced financial management transparency and accountability in the public sector, especially in the midst of the sovereign debt crisis.