Audit & Accounting

PriceWaterhouseCoopers has requested the dismissal of a mult-million-dollar claim filed following the bankruptcy of Metropolitan Mortgage & Securities.

Diane M. Rubin, a partner at San Francisco-based Novogradac & Co. LLP, was recently installed as chairwoman of the National Association of State Boards of Accountancy for 2005-06.

Krispy Kreme Doughnuts Inc. has again put off filing financial statements with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Giovanni Prezioso, general counsel at the Securities and Exchange Commission, said he would leave the regulator to return to a post in the private sector.

Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu and Grant Thornton International, along with Bank of America, have been named as defendants in two lawsuits seeking almost $1 billion for a trio of Cayman Islands companies.

After opposition from business and the accounting profession, the International Accounting Standards Board has shelved its plans to fast-track changes to its technical corrections policy.

Big Four firm PricewaterhouseCoopers and its global network reported combined member firm revenues of $20.3 billion for the year ended June 30, 2005, a nearly 17 percent rise in U.S. dollars versus the previous year.In local currencies, the firm's growth was about 12 percent. Excluding expenses reimbursed by clients, net aggregate revenues for the global network were $19 billion in U.S. dollars.

Investing in China may garner top billing at some international investment conferences, but 1.3 billion people building an economy with near double-digit growth rates still isn't enough to attract the interest of most CPA advisors.The risks and complications of investing in China keep most advisors away, but booming growth keeps the topic on the radar, and it's attracting additional fund companies.

* FIELDSTONE JETTISONS KPMG: Fieldstone Investment Corp. has dismissed KPMG as its auditor and named Big Four rival Deloitte as its replacement.Fieldstone, a Columbia, Md.-based residential mortgage banking concern, reported no unresolved accounting disagreement with KPMG for its two most recent fiscal years.

* AMERIPRISE SETTLES ON SALES OF 529 PLANS: Ameriprise Financial Inc. will pay $1.25 million to settle an enforcement action brought by regulators over its sales of Section 529 college savings plans, the company said. Ameriprise neither admitted nor denied wrongdoing.Brokerage regulator NASD said that the action against broker and insurer Ameriprise was its first in a probe into Section 529 plan sales practices at 20 securities firms. Other investigations are ongoing.