Audit & Accounting

The Public Company Accounting Oversight Board's Standing Advisory Group met to discuss reports addressing the audit implications of International Financial Reporting Standards in SEC filings, as well as changes in market responses to financial restatements post-Sarbanes-Oxley.

Gerrit Zalm, the former deputy prime minister and finance minister of the Netherlands, has been selected as the new chairman of the trustees of the International Accounting Standards Committee Foundation, which oversees the International Accounting Standards Board, in a sign of the growing influence of the European Union on the standards-setting process.

The Public Company Accounting Oversight Board has issued staff guidance on auditing internal controls in smaller public companies, allowing less complex companies to adjust more easily to a recently issued auditing standard for Sarbanes-Oxley compliance.

Wolters Kluwer Tax and Accounting has signed an agreement to buy TeamMate from PricewaterhouseCoopers.

Grant Thornton, the U.S. member firm of Grant Thornton International, posted a 12 percent rise in fiscal 2007 revenues to reach $1.036 billion.

A majority of U.S. companies are being victimized by economic crime, with losses totaling $223 million, according to a new study.

The Social Security Administration said monthly benefits would increase 2.3 percent for more than 54 million Americans in 2008.

Deloitte Touche Tomatsu said its aggregate member firm revenue increased by a record 15.5 percent to $23.1 billion for the fiscal year ended May 31.

It finally happened: The first Baby Boomer applied for Social Security this week. Kathleen Casey-Kirschling, a former teacher who was born at one second after midnight on Jan. 1, 1946, applied for Social Security benefits over the Internet, starting what is likely to be an avalanche of applications for retirement benefits.

Nortel Networks has agreed to pay $35 million to settle accounting fraud charges with the Securities and Exchange Commission.