Audit & Accounting

A bill that is now before the Connecticut State Senate would give its state comptroller the legal authority to establish GAAP for the state’s financials, thereby sidestepping the Governmental Accounting Standards Board — the standard-setter for governments and municipalities.

The Public Company Accounting Oversight Board issued its 2006 inspection report for Big Four firm Ernst & Young, citing problems in eight of the audit engagements it reviewed.The audit overseer inspectors said that E&Y appeared to have signed off on some audits without having sufficient evidence to support its opinions. However, the number of problems in E&Y's inspected audits declined since last year's report, when the PCAOB cited 10.

When Deborah F. Kretchmar, audit director of Horace Mann Cos., flipped through the introduction of Four Approaches to Enterprise Risk Management ... and Opportunities in Sarbanes-Oxley Compliance, she knew she had to have it."I bought the book because my company is looking at enterprise risk management and thinking about developing a more formal process for it," Kretchmar said. "We have informal processes, but S&P and Moody's are very interested in seeing us move toward a more formal process that they can place more reliance on."

TECUMSEH PRODUCTS JETTISONS PRICEWATERHOUSECOOPERSTecumseh Products Co., a manufacturer of electronic motors and compressors, has dismissed its auditor, Big Four firm PricewaterhouseCoopers, and named Grant Thornton as its new independent accountant. No reason was given for the change in auditors in a federal filing. Tecumseh said that it did not have any disagreements with PwC on financial statement disclosure, accounting principles or audits.

The fact that there has been no Baby Boomer "bust" has been due in large part to the skill of retirement planners, accountants and their clients.The bust was supposed to occur as Boomers began reaching retirement age without having saved enough to retire. This, coupled with the dismantling of the retirement and pension programs at a host of corporations nationwide, could have created the most poverty-stricken generation of retirees since the Great Depression.

The Certified Financial Planner Board of Standards said that after more than 20 years in Denver, the organization plans to relocate its headquarters to Washington, D.C. CFP Board chair Karen Schaeffer said, "The financial planning profession and the people it serves are being significantly impacted by public policy developments and trends in the financial sector that can best be monitored, influenced and managed from our nation's capital."The board expects to complete the move over the next few months.

Although couples generally agree on which retirement products they own, they often differ on their plans and expectations for retirement, according to research conducted by Fidelity Investments.Fidelity polled couples born between 1937 and 1964. When asked which income sources they would rely on most in retirement, most couples agreed that workplace savings plans, pensions and Social Security would top the list, but only 39 percent agreed upon which potential sources would be their primary source of income.

Former Senator Paul Sarbanes, D-Md., who, as the head of the Senate Banking Committee, co-authored the sweeping Sarbanes-Oxley Act, said that he supports developing additional guidance for smaller filers but, not surprisingly, he dismisses exempting those companies from compliance with the law's rigid Section 404."Stop and think about that for a moment," Sarbanes said in a speech before attendees at a conference on contemporary accounting issues. "That would mean that you would be exempting 80 percent of public companies from compliance."

My show business career was, to be kind, unremarkable.

Feeble audit procedures are allowing tax cheats to evade billions of dollars in U.S. tax liabilities each year by hiding funds in offshore accounts, government investigators told Congress.