Audit & Accounting

In a move to simplify accounting for servicing assets and liabilities, the Financial Accounting Standards Board has issued a standard that makes it easier for mortgage bankers and other servicers of financial assets to report on the value of derivatives to offset risks associated with securitizations and other types of servicing.The new standard, SFAS 156, "Accounting for Servicing Financial Assets," amends SFAS 140, "Accounting for Transfers and Servicing of Financial Assets and Extinguishments of Liabilities" - itself a replacement of FASB Statement No. 125. It allows servicers to choose between fair value and amortization measurements to report the value of derivatives, as well as the assets or liabilities related to them.

Sarbanes-Oxley may be helping to protect investors, but it is also hitting small public companies with a big accounting burden.The Securities and Exchange Commission established an advisory committee in April of 2005 to see how the weight of SOX could be eased for small filers. The subsequent report, issued as an exposure draft for public comment, offers several recommendations that may relieve some, though by no means all, of the burden.

This is our third installment on the recent CFA Institute monograph, A Comprehensive Business Reporting Model: Financial Reporting for Investors. The work, authored by a committee of experienced analysts, updates the 1993 commentary called Financial Reporting in the 1990s and Beyond. Like its predecessor, this report speaks forthrightly about the highly limited usefulness of current generally accepted accounting principles financial statements. (It's available without cost at http://cfapubs.org/.)The report's centerpiece is 12 principles that serve as a manifesto for replacing the status quo. We covered other principles in two earlier columns, and we now tackle a couple more.

After 16 years, the executive director of the Securities and Exchange Commission will step down to pursue opportunities in the private sector.Jim McConnell, 58, who joined the SEC in 1984 as a management analyst, plans to retire in early June and said that he will spend the next two months assisting with transition efforts at the agency.

Freddie Mac, the second-largest mortgage provider in the country, announced that chief financial officer Martin Baumann has resigned.The company is still recovering from an accounting scandal, and recently announced that it would delay filing its 2005 financials by two months. Freddie Mac's president and chief operating officer, Eugene McQuade, will assume Baumann's responsibilities while the company looks for a permanent successor.

Six weeks after a public disagreement over how the issuance of subpoenas to two business columnists was handled, the Securities and Exchange Commission has released guidelines describing exactly when and how journalist subpoenas will be issued in the future.

A study commissioned by the United Kingdom's accounting regulator and the U.K. Department of Trade and Industry said that the dominance of the Big Four is not healthy for competition and prevents small and midsized firms from gaining entry into blue-chip clients.

Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Christopher Cox announced that Wall Street fund lawyer Andrew "Buddy" Donohue will join the agency as the next director of the Division of Investment Management.

The chairman of an advisory panel to the Securities and Exchange Commission said that the group's pending proposal to roll back some of the internal controls provision of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act has not been dismissed even before it is officially proposed.

A husband and wife have filed a case against Ernst & Young, blaming the firm for the loss of $40 million in a tax shelter deemed abusive by the Internal Revenue Service, according to a published report.