Audit & Accounting

In one of his last public speaking appearances before stepping down as chairman of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board November 30, William McDonough told a roomful of financial and accounting executives that, while much progress had been made in restoring public confidence, maintenance is an ongoing mission.

The Public Company Accounting Oversight Board has released critical inspection reports for the audits of PricewaterhouseCoopers and Ernst & Young, saying that the firms' work has so many deficiencies, their evaluations of companies' finances may be questionable.

Financial Executives Research Foundation, the research affiliate of Financial Executives International, has released two new reports on Sarbanes-Oxley compliance and management reports on internal controls.

By a wide majority, the Senate passed legislation to hopefully strengthen corporate pension programs and provide aid to pension insurance agencies already in debt. A similar bill rewriting pension rules has received approval from two House committees.

There is a clear link between Sarbanes-Oxley Section 404 compliance work and dramatically higher profiles for senior tax executives, particularly with audit committees and boards of directors, according to a survey of senior tax executives conducted by KPMG.

The Securities and Exchange Commission's 2005 financial statements got a clean bill of health from the Government Accountability Office, after the SEC accelerated its financial reporting schedule to issue the documents.

Louisiana has chosen Deloitte & Touche to provide oversight of the state's receipt and delivery of federal aid recovery funds.

Bail was denied to one of the former KPMG partners charged by the federal government in connection with the sale of allegedly fraudulent tax shelters.

More than two-thirds of all small businesses favor setting different Sarbanes-Oxley compliance standards for small and large companies, according to a recent study commissioned by SAP America Inc.

Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Christopher Cox named Scott Taub as the agency's acting chief accountant.